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The Cedar Christian : 



And other Practical Papers 



And Personal Sketches. 



By 
THEODORE L. CUYLER. 

Pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Church, Brooklyn, 







NEW YORK. 
Robert Carter and Brothers, 

530 Broadway. 
1864. 



^W J./&& 



s°\ 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 
110BEET CAETER & BEOTHEES, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 



2 y i it 



Stereotyped by Printed by 

Smith & McDougal, E. O. Jenkins, 

84 Beekman-st. 20 North William-st. 



Many of the following articles have already 
appeared in the New York Independent and 
New York Evangelist, and are now collected 
in a permanent form. The volume takes its 
title from the first article ever contributed by 
the Author to the Independent. 



Contents, 



PAGE 

The Cedar Christian 7 

Morning Hours. 14 

A Day on Mount Eight 24 

To a Seeker after Christ. . , 30 

Have you an Anchor? 38 

Model Prayer-Meeting 45 

Jesus Only 52 

Love's Labor Light 59 

Quench not the Spirit , 64 

Show your Colors! 11 

Somebody's Son T9 

The Inexhaustible Barrel 86 

Famous Men Twenty Years ago 93 

Prayerless Prayers 107 

Little Sorrowful 101 

Christ the open Hospice 116 

Motley and his Monument 120 

The Flaw in the Wedding-Link 128 



vi Contents. 

PAGE 

Do All for Christ 134 

Answering our own Prayers 141 

Our Stumbling Brother 149 

A Christian's Eight Place 156 

The Whole Heart 163 

Christ a Companion 168 

An Evening on the Cayuga 178 

Light-Holders 183 

Dr. Guthrie 190 

Three Pictures on my Study Wall 197 

Eternity 205 

Ready ! 210 



The Cedar Christian. 

STROLLING one bright summer morning 
over the velvet carpet of " Chatsworth 
Park," we came suddenly upon a Cedar 
of Lebanon ! It was the first and only one we 
ever saw ; our first impulse was to uncover our 
head, and make obeisance to this monarch in ex- 
ile, this lone representative of the most regal fam- 
ily of trees upon the globe. Every bough was 
laden with glorious association to us. Broad, 
gnarled, severe, rough old tree as it was, yet it 
blossomed with poetry, and hung golden with 
heavenly teachings. As we gazed through our 
tears at the exiled sovereign, the voice of the 
Psalmist was in our ears — " The righteous shall 
grow like a cedar in Lebanon. 1 '' 

With that hardy veteran of Chatsworth in our 
mind's eye, let us say a word about the style of 
cedar Christians that we need in our day. Of 



8 The Cedar Chriftian. 

pliant willowy Church members — of brash and 
brittle basswood professors — of pretentious, fash- 
ion-following, bay-tree Christians, we have quite 
too many. Give us more cedars for the pulpit, 
for the elders' and deacons' seat, and for the pews. 
I. And the first quality of the cedar is that it 
groics. It is a living tree. Where there is 
hearty life, there must be growth. And it is the 
lamentable lack of inward godliness that makes 
the stunted professor. There is not vitalizing 
sap enough in his heart-roots to reach up into the 
boughs of his outward conduct. There is not 
vigor enough in the trunk of his character to 
stand erect. No answering showers brought 
down by fervent prayer to cleanse the dust of 
worldliness from his yellow, sicklied leaves. 
There he is — just as he was "set out" in the 
Church a score of years ago, no larger, no broad- 
er, no brighter in graces than he was then ; the 
caterpillars of last having spun their unsightly 
webs all over his branches. He has not grown 
an ell in any one Bible trait. He has not yield- 
ed one single fruit of the Spirit. He is a cum- 
berer of the ground — in the way of a better man 
— all the while drinking up God's pure air and 



The Cedar Chriftian. 9 

water, and yet fulfilling Satan's purpose. Not 
of such a prayer-neglecting professor, not of such 
a time-serving, money-loving, fashion-worship- 
ping professor, could we honestly say, "He 
grows like a cedar in Lebanon." 

II. But the cedar not only grows ; it has a 
peculiar style of growth which God's people may 
well imitate. It grows through all weathers. It 
is a hardy tree, or else it could not live a 
month in the Arctic climate of Lebanon's sky- 
piercing summits. Delicate plants might thrive 
on the warm lap of southern exposures, but not 
up among the rifts of whirling snows, or where 
the steel-like air gleams under the silent moon. 
Sudden hurricanes may twist off the gorgeous 
magnolias of the vale, or crack the brittle bay- 
tree, but let the gale rage ever so fiercely on 
Lebanon's blustering heights, let the snow squad- 
rons join battle in the hurtled air, the cedar 
tosses the tempest from its elastic boughs, and 
stands like the everlasting mountain under it. 
In God's Church there are to be found just such 
lignumvitse characters — storm-proof, gold-proof, 
temptation-proof. What a plantation of such 
cedars were the early apostles ! What a coronet 



io The Cedar Chriftian. 



of stalwart storrn-defiers graced the summit of 
God's Zion in Reformation days! Zwingle of 
Switzerland — John Knox, who never feared the 
face of man — burly Latimer, who marched sing- 
ing to Smithfield's kindled stake — John Huss, 
gazing up into the open heavens from the suffo- 
cating smoke and flame which are wrapping his 
tortured limbs — all these were cedars through 
whose branches the - very gales of persecution 
made glorious music. Here and there is such 
a cedar Christian discoverable in our century. 
They never bend. They never break. They 
never compromise. To such Christians, worldli- 
ness cometh, and smooth-tongued expediency com- 
eth, and sensual pleasure cometh, and slavery 
cometh, but "findeth nothing in them." Popu- 
lar hurricanes come down amain upon them, smit- 
ing a Hopkins, a Pierpont, or a Dudley Tyng in 
the pulpit — smiting a Wilberforce, a Jay, or an 
Adams in the legislative hall — smiting a Jona- 
than Edwards in his quiet study — a missionary 
Lyman in his lonely toils — a Neal Dow in his 
labors for the drunkard, and a Jonas King in 
his labors for the besotted bigots of Athens. But 
the cedar of principle proved an overmatch for 



The Cedar Chriftian. 11 



the blasts of selfishness, spite, or superstition. 
Persecution only made the roots of resolution 
strike the deeper, and the trunk of testimony 
stand the firmer. 

III. The greatest peril to such Christians as 
read these lines will not come in the form of per- 
secution ; but rather from those insidious worms 
that gnaw out the very heart of Gospel piety. 
Secret influences are the most, fatal in the every- 
day life of the e very-day unconspicuous professor. 
There is a whole colony of busy insects that will 
try the quality of a believer's timber. And when 
the community is startled by the spiritual defal- 
cation of some prominent man in the Church or 
in a religious society, it is only the crack of a 
beam or a pillar that was worm-eaten by secret sin 
long before. He only is a cedar of Christ's 
training and polishing who is sound to the very 
core. For the pride of Lebanon was not more 
famous for its vigor or its hardiness, than for its 
solidity of ivood. It knew no decay. It afford- 
ed asylum to no stealthy insect turning its aro- 
matic wood into dust and ashes. Therefore did 
Israel's royal temple builder select it for the 
most conspicuous and important portions of the 



12 The Cedar Chriftian. 



edifice on Mount Mori ah. With its fine grain, 
its high polish, and delightful fragrance, every 
lintel and every door-post was at once a strength 
and an ornament to the temple of the living God. 
So stand the faithful, fearless, minister of Christ, 
the incorruptible Christian patriot, the unflinch- 
ing testimony-bearer for the truth as it is in Je- 
sus. They bid defiance to the worm of sin while 
they live, and to the worm of calumny when they 
are dead. Centuries hence, their memory will 
be as sound and as fragrant as the chests of san- 
dal wood in which the Oriental kings were wont 
to conceal their treasures. 

IV. The last noticeable thing with the cedar 
is its breadth of limb. The verdant veteran of 
Chatsworth had a diameter greater than its 
height. Elliott informs us that he saw cedars on 
the top of Lebanon that were thirty feet in cir- 
cumference of trunk ! Their limbs were so wide 
spreading that the diameter of the branches from 
the extreme of one side of the tree to the opposite 
extreme, was one hundred feet ! Under that ma- 
jestic canopy a whole regiment might find shel- 
ter. Now we need not go far to find just such a 
broad-armed Christian. Broad in his catholic 



The Cedar Chriftian. 13 

sympathy -with all the " faithful in Christ Je- 
sus" of every sect — broad in his love of Man, 
irrespective of clime, color, or condition — broad 
in his pecuniary benevolence, is our cedar brother. 
Hundreds of happy beneficiaries lie down under 
the shadow of his liberality. The poor scholar 
whom he helps with books — the poor orphan whom 
he helps to a home — the poor harlot and the ine- 
briate, for whom he builds the asylum — the poor 
sin-struck heathen man of far-away India, to 
whom he sends the " good tidings," are each and 
all the richer for his broad-limbed beneficence. 
There is room for regiments of sufferers to bi- 
vouac under such a man. It will make a sore 
and sorrowful void when that imperial Cedar is 
transplanted to the banks of the Crystal River, 
in the Paradise of God. 



c-^osu> 



Morning Hours. 

Beginning the Day with God. 

A MAN of average duration of life (thirty 
years) sees about ten thousand mornings 
in the course of his existence. He begins 
ten thousand days ; and as the after-issues and 
conduct of the day depend so much upon the be- 
ginnings, we wish to say a few practical words on 
beginning every day with God. Morning piety 
has much to do with household piety and with 
the whole current of one's e very-day religion. 

Every morning gives us (in a limited sense, 
of course) a new birth and commencement of life 
afresh. Sleep is the twin-sister of death, We 
lie for hours mute, motionless, and irresponsible. 
The outward world is a blank ; the mind is vir- 
tually a silent chamber, through which incoher- 



Morning Hours. 15 

ent dreams sometimes flit to and fro ; life is sus- 
pended as to thought, action, and moral agency. 

After a few hours of deep slumber — practi- 
cally as devoid of activity as a sleep in the grave 
would be — the rosy finger of the morning touches 
us, as the Divine Restorer touched the motionless 
form of the dead maiden in Jairus's house, and 
says, Arise ! In an instant life sets its wheels 
again in motion. "We leap up from that tem- 
porary tomb, our bed. We awake refreshed, re- 
stored, made anew for a fresh start on the life- 
journey. Was yesterday a sick day? Sleep, 
like a good doctor, has made us well. We left 
our aches and pains in the vale of dreams. Was 
yesterday a sad day? Sleep has blunted the 
edge of our grief and soothed the agitated nerves. 
Was it (like too many of its predecessors) a lost 
day ? Then our Merciful Father puts us on a 
new probation, and gives us a chance to save this 
new-born day for Him and for the holy purposes 
of our existence. 

Do we lose the morning ', either by long sleep, 
indolence, or aimlessness ? Then we commonly 
lose the day. One hour of the morning is worth 
two at the sun- setting. The best hours for study, 



16 Morning Hours. 

for invention, for plans, and for labor are the 
first hours which the mind and the body have 
after their resurrection from the couch of slum- 
ber. Napoleon — who, above all generals, knew 
the value of time — seized the early dawn. Wal- 
ter Scott wrote nearly all his Waverley romances 
before breakfast, and achieved a literary immor- 
tality while his guests were sleeping. The nu- 
merous and erudite commentaries of Albert 
Barnes are monuments to early rising ; they will 
ever attest ho w. much a man can accomplish who 
gets at his work by "four o'clock in the morn- 
ing." To the student, to the artist, to the mer- 
chant, to the day -laborer, the mest useful hours 
are reached before the sun climbs to the meri- 
dian. I am well aware that a vast deal of tra- 
ditional stuff has come down to us about the 
" midnight lamp." But I have generally found 
that those w T ho use most the " midnight lamp," 
either for study or dissipation, burn their own 
lamp of life out the soonest. While good men 
are most active in the morning, the '"children 
of darkness," knaves, roues, and debauchees are 
most busy at the midnight Make it a rule, 
then, that he who would begin the day aright 



Morning Hours. 17 

must seize and save its earliest hours. How of- 
ten do we see some poor, careless, dilatory fellow 
rushing in blundering haste through the whole 
day in a vain chase after the hour he lost in the 
morning ! 

II. Every day should be commenced with God 
and upon the knees. " In the morning will I 
direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up," 
said that man who was " after God's own heart." 
He begins the day unwisely who leaves his cham- 
ber without a secret conference with Christ, his 
best friend. The true Christian goes into his 
closet for his armor ; before night he will need 
the whole panoply. He goes to his closet for his 
spiritual " rations" for the day's march. As the 
Eastern traveller sets out for the sultry journey 
over torrid sands by loading up his camel under 
the palm-tree's shade, and by filling his water- 
flasks from the cool fountain that sparkles at its 
roots, so doth God's wayfarer draw his morning 
supplies from the unexhausted spring. Morning 
is the golden hour for devotion. The mind is 
fresh. The mercies of the night provoke to 
thankfulness. The buoyant heart, that is in 
love with God, makes its earliest flight, like the 
2* 



18 Morning Hours. 

lark, toward the gates of heaven. Gratitude, de- 
pendence, love, faith, all prompt to early inter- 
views with Him who, never sleeping and never 
slumbering Himself, waits on His throne for our 
morning orisons. Yv r e all remember Bunyan's 
beautiful description of his Pilgrim who "awoke 
and sang" in the Chamber of Peace which, 
looked toward the sun-rising. If stony Egyptian 
Memnon made music when the first rays of the 
light kindled on his flinty brow, a living Chris- 
tian heart should not be mute when God causes 
the outgoings of his mornings to rejoice. 

III. Closet devotions are the precursor to fam- 
ily worship. Family religion underlies the com- 
monwealth and the church of Christ. No Chris- 
tian government — no healthy public conscience 
— no Bible-philanthropies — no godly church- 
life, can exist without their roots beneath Chris- 
tian hearth-stones and family altars. The " tu- 
tamen et decus'' of dear old Scotland is found 
in those scenes of fireside worship which Burns 
has so sweetly pictured : 

" From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad." 



Morning Hours. 19 

No prelude to the day is so fitting, so im- 
pressive, so powerful in its sacred influence as 
the union of household hearts around the throne 
of grace. When a cheerful morning-hymn is 
sung, even the "wee bairnies" can join their 
carol ; and what might be tortured into a pen- 
ance is transformed into a delight. Morning 
worship at the family altar is a " strong seam" 
well stitched on the border of the day, to keep 
it from ravelling out into irreligion, indolence, 
contention, and sin. Wise is that Christian par- 
ent who hems every morning with the Word of 
God and fervent prayer ! 

IV. When the early devotions of the day are 
over, and a distinct plan of useful labor laid out, 
then let us shoulder up the day's load cheer- 
fully. God will make the load light if we ask 
Him. And the happiness and serenity of the 
whole day depend much upon a cheerful start. 
The man who leaves his home with a scowl on 
his brow, with a snap at his children, and a tart 
speech to his wife, is not likely to be a very 
pleasant companion for any one through the day, 
or to return home at night less acid than a vine- 
gar-cruet. But more than cheerfulness is needed 



2o Morning Hours. 

for some days, whose advancing hours come load- 
ed with unexpected sorrows. For such days let 
us make ready every morning by putting our- 
selves under the wing of a Saviour's loving care. 
We know not how soon the last sunrise may light 
us on our way, nor how soon we shall hear on 
earth the last "good morning." 

"We have just returned from the funeral of the 
heroic veteran, Lyman Beecher, and as we 
gazed on his sleeping clay, we could not but 
think, " Oh, sainted patriarch ! how many must 
be thy glorified spiritual children on the ' sea of 
glass,' who have already greeted thee with hea- 
ven's glad good morning /" 

All that we have sought to say is finely con- 
densed by Bonar into these lines : 

" Begin thy day with G-od ; 
He is thy sun and day ; 
His is the radiance of thy dawn ; 
To Him address thy lay. 

" Take thy first meal with God ; 
He is thy heavenly food ; 
Feed with and on Him ; He with thee 
"Will feast in brotherhood. 

" Take thy first walk with God ; 
Let Him go forth with thee ; 



Morning Hours. 21 

By stream, or sea, or mountain-path, 
Seek still His company. 



" Thy first transactions be 
With God himself above ; 
So shall thy business prosper well, 
And all the day be love." 



A Day on Mount Righi. 

EVERY traveller has a few un-forget-able 
days in his experiences ; and one of these 
is the day he spends on the great observa- 
tory of the Alps, Mount Righi. If it is a stormy 
day he never forgets his disappointment ; if it is 
a clear one he never forgets his delight. Yes- 
terday was a fair one after many dark days and 
fog-bound. The sun conquered the mists as full- 
orbed truth vanquishes error. 

We set off from Lucerne in the morning. A 
swift steamer took us over the blue water of the 
peerless lake in half an hour to Kussnacht. 
Here we landed, and securing a Swiss lad for 
porter of overcoats we started for the Culm. Pe- 
destrianism is fashionable in Switzerland ; it is 
vulgar to ride except for weak-ankled men and 
ladies. One of my companions wore a pair of 



A Day on Mount Righi. 23 

thick boots which he said u knew every road 
among the Oberland Alps." The distance to 
the mountain-house is at least six miles — the 
first part of the way through orchards loaded 
with fruit. On every side we pass brown-faced 
women (innocent of bonnets) toiling in the fields, 
for in Switzerland woman is made a beast of bur- 
then. I have seen a young girl hitched with a 
small steer before a cart. They are healthy, vir- 
tuous, and even the poorest female peasants 
seemed happy under their hard lot. 

By 12 o'clock we had reached the half-way 
house, drenched with perspiration. We halted 
at the smoky chalet, and found a loaf of the de- 
licious Swiss bread, and a bowl of milk, for this 
is the land that literally "flows with milk and 
honey." I peeped into the side-room of the cot- 
tage and discovered a stream of water flowing 
through it, with a dozen bottles of wine and beer 
keeping cool in the bottom of the stream for the 
refreshment of mountain-clamber ers. Over head 
on the rough timbers was a sort of ark or huge 
box in which the family enjoy their dormitory. 
In such rude cabins dwell the hard-toiling peas- 
antry of this beautiful land ; from such homes 



24 A Day on Mount Righi. 

came forth the stalwart arms that fought the bat- 
tles for Tell and liberty. 

While we are lunching under the trees we be-, 
gin to catch ravishing views of the lake below us 
— of Lucerne — of the bluest of blue waters of 
Lake Zug, and of the distant vineyards towards 
the Rhine. The last part of the. way is like 
Christian's ascent of the Hill Difficulty, where 
the pilgrim " falls from running to walking, and 
from walking to clambering on the knees." 
Wearily we toiled on until three o'clock when the 
welcome balcony of the " Hotel du Righi-Culm" 
broke upon our delighted eyes, and the summit 
was gained. Overcoats are in demand at once, 
for a July noonday on the Righi is about like 
our November. We are 5670 feet above the sea- 
level, and on a bare mound, destitute of trees, 
but covered with a soft velvet turf. For that 
single acre of ground the landlord paid ten thou- 
sand dollars ! 

With map in hand we commence our survey 
of the wonderful panorama. Forty mountains are 
in sight — nearly all the finest lakes in Switzer- 
land — and a circumference of three hundred 
miles, with every variety of scene from the polar 



A Day on Mount Righi. 25 

solitudes of the ice-clad Wetterhorn to the emer- 
ald vineyards that nestle in the vales of Zurich. 
The lofty group right before us are the Mouch, 
the Eigher, and the beautiful Jungfrau. This 
is the mountain which Prof. Agassiz had the 
hardihood to ascend, when even his guide gave 
out through cold and terror. It is commonly 
enveloped in clouds, but towards sunset last even- 
ing the "bride of the Alps" unveiled herself, and 
stood forth in snowy vesture to receive the part- 
ing kiss of the king of day. 

Next to the Jungfrau lies the enormous glacier 
of Grindlewald which projects its shelf of blue ice 
clear to the borders of the vineyards and the har- 
vest fields. That glacier is of solid ice eight 
hundred feet in thickness, and the drippings of 
its Summer thaw supply a rapid river ! To- 
wards its summit no sun-beams ever have even 
softened one of its glittering pinnacles, and every 
drop of rain that descends from the clouds is 
frozen to snow before it touches the ice-sea be- 
neath ! As the sun falls on that glorious glacier, 
it shines like a stairway of pearl leading up from 
earth to heaven. An arch of cloud o'erhangs it, 
and through it we gaze, as the seer of Patmos 



26 A Day on Mount Righi. 

gazed through into the streets of shining gold like 
unto transparent glass. 

Beyond this glacier tower the four pyramids 
of the Wetterhorn, or the "Peak of Tempests." 
Then comes the Finster-aahorn or " Peak of 
Darkness ;" then the Schrekhorn or " Peak of 
Terror." But -why attempt to enumerate the 
whole retinue of mighty mountains that here do 
wait before the throne of the Great King? 
Earth has no sublimer scene. In no spot can one 
open the one hundred and fourth Psalm, and so 
take in the transcendent grandeur that must have 
possessed him who first sang it in the Creator's 
praise. 

For hours I stood enraptured with the ice- 
mountains in the South. Then I turned east- 
ward, and the panorama changed. Instead of 
bold bleak battlements of ice and granite, lo ! a 
sweet green vale lay before me so far down that 
the houses seemed but nut-shells, and the high- 
ways but threads across the landscape. This 
was the famous and ill-fated valley of Goldau. 
Above it hangs the Rossberg mountain, and that 
huge scar on its side marks the spot whence the 
avalanche of earth broke away that overwhelmed 



A Day on Mount Righi. 27 

the unhappy village in its fall. It occurred on 
the afternoon of September 2, 1806. The in- 
habitants were startled by a sound like thunder. 
The air began to fill with black dust. In five 
minutes the lid of their mighty sepulchre had 
fallen ; and in one huge grave three miles in 
length lie buried four hundred and fifty beings, 
husband and wife, parent and child, lover and 
mistress ! It is now one heap of broken earth, 
covered with a few scattered chestnuts, through 
whose branches the evening winds sigh forth the 
requiem of departed Goldau. From the dizzy 
summit of the Righi, multitudes look down on 
that vast grave with silent awe, and turn shud- 
dering from the spectacle. 

Beyond the Rossberg lies the celebrated battle- 
field of Morgarten. The lake of Zug — with the 
church of Kappel beside which Zwingle the re- 
former fell — spreads its pavement of sapphire be- 
low us. Then the eye takes in the spot where 
the heroic Tell shot the tyrant Gessler. Off to 
the West — glittering in the setting sun like a 
golden shield — shines the Lake of Sempach. On 
its shores Arnold of Winkelreid gained his famous 
victory at the price of his own precious blood. 



28 A Day on Mount Righi. 

What an assemblage. What a panorama of his- 
tory illuminated with settings of mountains and 
of waters — of icy coronets set upon the everlast- 
ing hills ! We question whether our globe has 
another spectacle more sublimely eloquent in its 
utterances to the eye of the historian, the poet, 
or the student of nature in her most magnificent 
unfoldings. 

While we stood,. at sunset, gazing on the en-, 
rapturing scene, the notes of an Alpine horn 
sounded out through the crystal air ! This was 
all that was needed to complete the enchantment. 
The liquid music echoed back and forth from cliff 
to cliff, until it seemed to be strained of all its 
grosser qualities and returned in pure delicious 
melody upon the ear. It was a dream of Swit- 
zerland from my boyhood's days, all realized in 
one ecstatic moment. And as the visions of the 
past came back — of Arnold, of Tell, of Zwingle, 
and of the glorified Calvin — I was ready to 
break into tears and weep with wonder and with 

From such scenes it is not easy to turn away ; 
but on Monday next I set my face homeward. 
The object of my brief tour is accomplished, and 



A Day on Mount Righi. 29 

I cannot consent to be seeking for the pleasures of 

foreign travel while the William Tells of my own 

dear native land are warring the decisive conflict 

for our nation's life and liberty. 

Lucerne, August 9, 1862. 

8* 



<^J&> 






To the Seeker after Christ. 

ARE there no longer any inquirers in our 
congregations ? Amid the financial anxi- 
eties, are there none anxious about their 
souls ? Amid the civil commotions about saving 
the Union, or saving the cause of freedom, is 
there no awakened sinner crying out, " What 
shall I do to be saved from the wrath to come ?" 
We do not doubt that among the tens of thou- 
sands who sit weekly around The Independent 
> — as round a well-spread table — there must be 
many who are even now seeking after Christ. 
To make this search successful, two or three 
things must not be forgotten. 

I. Remember, then, my anxious friend ! in the 
first place, that simply to feel anxious is not 
enough. You may have great depth and inten- 
sity of feeling ; it may sometimes amount to ag- 
ony. If that feeling is the legitimate contrition 



To the Seeker after Omit 31 

of a conscience awakened to the enormity of sin, 
then thank God for it. But do not be content 
with mere feeling. Tears never yet saved a soul. 
Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost oppor- 
tunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered 
Savior. Your Bible does not say, weep and be 
saved. It says, believe and be saved. Faith is 
better than feeling. Even faith in the abstract 
is not enough ; without " works, 7 ' without action, 
faith is dead. " The devils believe and tremble." 
There is not an atheist, no ! nor an indifferent 
trifler, in the world of woe. The devils believe, 
but they do not obey God or love God. You 
must obey as well as believe. Begin, then, to 
practice on your first promptings of duty. Try 
to walk ; if not able to walk, then creep ; but do 
not lie still, vainly longing to be a Christian, 
without trying to be a Christian. Do not wait 
for more emotion. Act out your present feel- 
ings. Begin to discharge duty from principle 
and with a purpose to please Christ. We will 
not dictate what it shall be ; but let us ask a 
suggestive question or two. Have you ever 
prayed with your family ? Or if you have no 
family, have you ever prayed with your room- 



32 To the Seeker after Chrift. 



mate? Try it. No matter if there is some 
staring, or even some smiling. People sometimes 
smile to keep from crying. You need to pray 
where your prayer will do yourself good at the 
same time that it does others good. Have you 
an intimate friend or kinsman that is yet living 
without God ? Then take him by the hand and 
invite him to Christ. Helping others you will 
help yourself. And it is well to begin practicing 
the generosities of the Gospel at once. Christ 
will rejoice in the honor you bring to him by 
trying to lead a sinner unto him. 

Do you owe an old debt, that was outlawed 
long ago ? Then go, and astonish your quondam 
creditor by paying it up in full. Let him see 
that you are beginning to practice that divine 
code which says. " Owe no man anything — but 
love." In some way, and in every possible way, 
crystallize your religious feelings into religious 
acts. You never will be saved by works ; but 
let us tell you most solemnly that you never will 
be saved ivithout works. You must ' l keep the 
commandments/' or the love of Christ cannot be 
within you. 

II. Do not ask God to save you precisely as 



To the Seeker after Chrift. 33 

he has saved some others of whom you have read 
or heard. Do not judge your feelings by theirs. 
Judge yourself by the Bible, and do not say, 
" Why am I not wrought upon just as my friend 

A was ?" " Why do I not get those views 

of Christ which Mr. B has ?" God is a 

sovereign, and will save you in his own way — 
not in yours. He no more requires you to pass 

through the same experience with A and 

B , than he requires you to look like them 

or to dress like them. His command is — repent 
and believe on Christ. Are you honestly and 
prayerfully struggling to do that? Then you 
are beginning to have a spiritual experience of 
your own ; and one of its beauties will be that it 
resembles exactly no other human experience un- 
der the sun. Oh, how rich God is ! He does 
not need to copy himself. He loveth to please 
his own sovereign skill. Some hearts he opens 
with the gentlest touch of his love ; others he 
pryeth open with the heavy bar of arousing judg- 
ments. Some sinners are sweetly and quietly 
won to Christ ; others are driven to him through 
the hail-storm of threatenings and the thunder- 
ings of an upbraiding conscience. Spurgeon 



34 To the Seeker after Chrift. 

pithily remarks, "When the lofty palm of Zeilan 
puts forth its flower, the sheath bursts with a re- 
port which echoes through the forest ; but thou- 
sands of other plants of equal beauty open in the 
morning, and the very dew-drops hear no sound ; 
so many souls blossom into grace and the world 
hears neither whirlwind nor moral hurricane." 

III. Let me entreat you not to be discouraged 
if your searchings after the Saviour do not bring 
an immediate assurance of pardon and of peace. 
Christ parried the Syro-pbenician woman's en- 
treaties in order to test the sincerity of her faith. 
If a heart's happy hope were gained too easily, it 
might be valued too lightly. Give not up, my 
friend ! if every hour were required to be spent 
in the search for Jesus until your dying day. 
But no such protracted experience need be yours. 
I fear that you do not grasp the full meaning of 
God's permission to come " with boldness" to the 
throne of grace. Ask what you want, and all 
you want. You are not a stranger at the door 
of the Great King. The King's Son is ready 
himself to take in your petition, and intercede 
with his Almighty Father for you, and to press 
your suit. Despair never saved a sinner yet. 



To the Seeker after Chrift. 35 

We are " saved by hope." You lose everything 
by discouragement and retreat. You gain every- 
thing by pressing on. Suppose that Columbus, 
when within a few leagues of the West Indies, 
had yielded to despair, and sailed homewards. It 
was the last league sailed over that gave immor- 
tality to him, and and a new continent to civili- 
zation. So it will be the last decisive step of sur- 
rendering your whole soul to Christ that unlocks 
to you the eternal glories of the heavenly inher- 
itance. 

I will not insult you by hinting even that you 
are not to be deterred by fear of ridicule. Only 
a fool is thus pushed back by a straw. He who 
is more afraid of the empty laugh of a trifler than 
he is of the indignant frown of a holy God, sure- 
ly deserves to be cast off for ever. There is but 
one way to manage the nettle of ridicule ; touch 
it timidly and it shall prick thee, but grasp it 
with a firm hand and it crushes into a handful 
of down. Those who laugh at you to-day will 
love you to-morrow, when they see you are too 
earnest to be trifled with. 

IV. Our last brief counsel is to cherish the 
Holy Spirit, He may be visiting you for the 



36 To the Seeker after Chrift. 

last time. His agency is indispensable. If he 
leaves you, you are lost. You need him to con- 
quer your stubborn will, to change your affec- 
tions from hatred to love of God, and to purify 
the heart. He may be easily grieved. Quench 
not the spirit. Incidents to illustrate this danger 
are never out of place, and the following touch- 
ing narrative has just met my eye. It fell from 
the lips of a faithful minister now in heaven. 
Said he : 

" During a revival of religion in Yale College, 
several years ago, two young men were awakened 
at the same time. One of them had been re- 
markably correct in his general deportment, and 
was amiable in his disposition ; the other was a 
wild, frolicksome, sportive youth. As they 
walked one evening, they agreed to call upon the 
professor of theology and make known to him 
their anxiety, and seek advice. They came to 
the gate, when the amiable young man leaned 
over the fence and said, ' I believe I won't go in ; 
I don't know as it will do me any good.' His 
companion replied, ' You can do as you please ; 
but, for myself, I feel that I need all the counsel 
that men of experience can give ; I am resolved 



To the Seeker after Chriit. 37 

to go in.' Here they parted. The former passed on. 
He smothered the flame in his own breast, and 
shrunk from the cross and from Christian counsel. 
He was soon found to be declining, not only in 
religious feeling, but in correctness of moral de- 
portment ; and before the time to graduate ar- 
rived, he had wandered so far as to be expelled 
from college for immorality ; he sunk rapidly in 
vice, went to the West Indies, and there died, 
not long after, a miserable sot. The other went 
in, opened his heart, and received direction in the 
way of life. He soon found peace in believing, 
entered the ministry, and now stands before you, 
a redeemed sinner, saved by grace. 7 ' 

Lay down this paper, inquiring friend, and be- 
take yourself to prayer. Delay not an hour. On 
the delay of an hour — so insulting to the waiting 
Saviour — hangs guilt enough to sink a soul. 
Life and death are set before you. Nothing is 
more certain than the uncertainty of human life. 
To-morrow you may be wrapped in your shroud, 
and your spirit be summoned to the presence of 
its God. What thou doest, do quickly. 



Have You an Anchor ? 

LOOKING out from our upper window this 
morning toward the bay, we can see a 
home-bound ship riding gallantly up past 
the quarantine station and the leafy shores of 
Staten Island. She looks weary from a long 
voyage ; and on her bow, as a field-marshal wears 
a star upon his breast, she bears her anchor. It 
has done good service, and deserves its place of 
honor on her front. It has been her salvation on 
many a night of tempest. Though it hangs idle 
now beneath her bowsprit, yet more than once, 
when the gale struck her in the open roadstead, 
or, when off a wild lee shore, the hurricane made 
hideous music through her cordage, like one im- 
mense harp strung to the gales, that anchor was 
unloosed, and, running out with merry rattle of 
the chains, it dove straight downward to its rest- 
ing place. Upon the bottom of the deep its flukes 



Have You an Anchor ? 39 

took brave hold ; and while the ship strained on 
the cable above, the patient flukes stoutly held 
on below. As soon might she attempt a voyage 
without a compass to guide her, or without can- 
vas to impel her, as without an anchor to keep 
her from the devouring rocks or the yawning lee 
shore. So, when she returns in triumph from a 
campaign with the elements, scarred with colli- 
sions of the angry deep, it is fitting that she bear 
on her bosom, as a trust and a trophy, the good 
anchor that held her safely. 

Voyager to eternity, have you the " anchor of 
the soul sure and steadfast ?" It is the Christian 
hope, Paul tells us. It is the hope in Christ 
which holds the soul of man as an anchor holds a 
ship. You cannot have it without knowing it, 
and if you have it, you will be none the better 
if you do not use it in the hour of need. 

I. You will need it to keep you from drifting 
away into skepticism and unbelief. There is no 
such safeguard against practical infidelity as the 
possession of a living faith in Jesus. And the 
secret of so many a lapse into error — of so much 
veering about with "every wind of doctrine" — is 
found in the lack of a well-grounded hope in the 



4-0 Have You an Anchor? 

inner heart. As soon as the soul begins to swing 
away into painful doubts — doubts of God, of the 
truth of his Word, of the mercy of his dealings, 
of the triumph of his cause, or of the reality of 
heaven, then let go the anchor to the bottom. 
Nothing; else will hold against that devil of doubt 
but a practical faith in the Lord Jesus. 

II. But if you are not assailed with doubts, 
you are certain to be assailed with troubles. No 
hurricane can arise more suddenly upon a full- 
rigged ship, when moving gracefully before an 
evening breeze, than will the storms of adversity 
burst upon you ; they will come, too, at the most 
unexpected moment. God lets loose his tempests 
on the soul, as he lets loose his tempests on the 
sea, without an hour's warning. As a vessel is 
often stripped of her mainsails, or looses her spars 
before the seamen can man the yards to take in 
canvas, so may it be with you. You may be 
struck "all aback" — may be obliged to heave 
overboard many of your cherished possessions — 
you may be stripped of many a topsail which am- 
bition had hoisted, or many a spar of prosperity ; 
but if Christ is in the soul you cannot suffer 
wreck. Christ in the depths of the soul will an- 



Have You an Anchor? 41 

chor you. You do not see what holds a vessel 
when the storm is smiting her. The anchor is 
all invisible, as it lies in the untroubled quiets 
"full many a fathom deep." So when we see a 
man beaten upon with adversity, or lying under 
a perfect Euroclydon of trials, and yet preserving 
a calm, cheerful spirit, we do not see, always, 
what is the secret of his serenity. We wonder 
why he is " not moved as other men are." But 
God sees a hope sure and steadfast, lying down 
deep beneath the surface. Trouble strips the man 
of much of his external gear and cordage, but 
never touches the interior source and strength of 
his piety. Yv 7 hen Martin Luther was struck 
with sudden tempests, he used to sing the forty- 
sixth Psalm above the roar of the winds ; his an- 
chor never dragged. The devil let loose the ut- 

Co 

most of his fury upon Paul ; but the brave apos- 
tle had an " I know whom I have believed," that 
struck its flukes under the Rock of Ages. 
God, thou wilt keep in perfect peace the soul that 
is stayed on thee. 

III. There is a danger to the Christian greater 
than adversity or the persecution of enemies. It 

is from the stealthy under-current s of temptation. 
4* 



42 Have You an Anchor? 

An unanchored ship may be lying on waters as 
smooth as glass, and yet, before the master is 
aware, his keel is on a rock. The invisible tide 
bore him away so softly and so silently that he 
did not observe the motion. Had the wind risen, 
he would have taken the alarm : he did not sus- 
pect that an under-current was stealthily carry- 
ing him away. So are thousands of Christian 
professors carried . on the rocks every day, not 
with shocks of adversity, but by invisible under- 
currents. One man insensibly drifts into neglect 
of prayer, and into laxity of Sabbath observance. 
Another one feels the hand of sensual temptation 
on the keel, but takes no alarm until he strikes 
the rock with a hideous rent of his Christian 
character. Another gets in an under-current of 
worldliness ; it swings him along slowly, but 
surely, until he has lost sight of the lighthouse 
on the headland ; he is aroused by ■ no sudden 
shock, but when we look for him where he used 
to be, and where he ought to be, he is not there. 
The world got hold of his keel, and his anchor 
had no hold on Christ. Is not this the secret of 
by far the larger part of all the backsliding in 
the Church ? 



Have You an Anchor 4 ? 43 

It is not strength of intellect that saves a man, 
or the surroundings of society, or alliance with a 
church, or orthodoxy of belief. All these have 
proved but ropes of sand attached to anchors of 
straw. They never hold a man when the tide of 
temptation sets in. He must have Christian prin- 
ciple, or he is lost. No man is safe in business, 
or safe in public life, or safe in private morals, 
when his conscience is unloosed from Christ. 
When his godly principle gives way, he may float 
smoothly for a while ; but it is a mere question 
of time how soon he shall strike and go to the 
bottom. Remember, God never insures a man, 
even in the church, who has no anchor of true re- 
ligion. And if you ever reach heaven, my friend, 
you will come in, like yonder vessel, with your 
anchor at your prow. You will give all the 
glory then, not to your own skill or your own 
seamanship, but to the blessed " anchor, sure and 
steadfast, which entereth into that within the 
vail." 

" There are ships," says the eloquent Melville, 
" that never will founder in life's battles, or go 
down in life's tempests. There are ships which 
shall be in no neril when the last hurricane shall 



44 Have You an Anchor? 

sweep earth, and sea, and sky ; and which, when 
the fury is overpast, and the light that knows no 
night breaks gloriously forth, shall be found on 
tranquil and crystal waters, resting beautifully 
on their shadows. These are they who have 
trusted in Jesus ; these are they who have been 
anchored upon Christ." 



^\®@^9 



The Model Prayer Meeting. 

IT began punctually at the moment. As the 
clock struck eight the leader rose and sound- 
ed the reveille, by giving out the inspiring 
lines — 

" Come, my soul, thy suit prepare ; 
Jesus loves to answer prayer." 

A sweet symphony was touched on a piano in one 
of the crowded rooms, and then the words of the 
hymn were sent heavenward on a full tide of 
united and enthusiastic song. Every voice chimed 
in. Each verse was sung with more spirit than 
ite predecessor, marking the outcome of the ris- 
ing devotion; and, like a strong " off-shore" 
breeze, the opening chant of praise carried the 
whole meeting out of harbor into the larger lib- 
erty and deep waters of the open sea. Then the 
leader invoked the descent of the Holy Ghost, 



46 The Model Prayer Meeting. 

the gift of utterance, and the Pentecostal baptism. 
It -was a very short prayer, but very full. He 
prayed for the gift of prayer upon all, for hon- 
esty of speech, for deliverance from dead formal- 
ities, for sincerity in confession, for child-like 
familiarity of approach to God, for filial faith ; 
aud then closed by inviting Christ to " come in, 
as through the closed doors of the disciples' upper 
room at Jerusalem, and speak. Peace be unto 
you" 

As soon as a fitting passage of the Word had 
been read, each one present seemed ready to bear 
his part in giving life and interest to the occa- 
sion. Each one felt, " This is not the leader's 
meeting, nor the pastor's, but my meeting with 
my own spiritual family at the feet of my own 
Saviour. Here I have a right to speak. Here 
I have a right to weep, and sing, and melt in 
spirit, and flow out in social communings with 
the brotherhood around me. If I am silent, then 
the meeting may prove dumb ; and if I freeze up, 
then my neighbor may chill through, until the 
place becomes an ice-house." So there was no 
entreaty required on the part of the leader to 
"draw out" those present. He was obliged to 



The Model Prayer Meeting. 47 

use no turnkey. What is more pitiful than to 
see a poor embarrassed elder or deacon sit before 
a petrified company, and after a long, awful pause, 
in which you can count the clock-ticks, beseech- 
ingly implore ''some brother present to improve 
the time ?" As if the dreary dribble of dulness 
that was forced out by such a process was not a 
downright m ^-improvement and murder of the 
sweet, sacred hour of devotion. It is no wonder 
that so many of us grew up with a loathing for 
the very name, and next to a taste of the birch 
that grew behind the school-house, we dreaded a 
sentence to "go to prayer meeting." Our only 
solace was a sound nap, until some one shook our 
eyes open, and with an admonitory thump in- 
formed us that " meetin's out ; it is time to go 
home." 

But even a child of eight years old would have 
been interested in the enlivening service we are 
now etching. Not a moment was lost; not a 
syllable of persuasion was needed. One man 
rose and gave a touching account of the scene a 
few evenings before, when he had first set up a 
family altar in his once prayerless house. That 
was his first audible prayer, and this was his first 



48 The Model Prayer Meeting. 

speech. "While he is speaking, the tears stream 
down the cheek of his astonished and overjoyed 
wife. Then comes a fervid prayer of thanksgiv- 
ing to Grod from some one present, and a petition 
that the family altar thus reared may never be 
desecrated, or thrown down. After this a youth 
arose, with a blue jacket, and an anchor em- 
broidered on his broad collar. He had been 
brought there by a tract visitor. The burden of 
his short, artless speech was, Come to Jesus. 
" Whosoever will, let him come," said the sun- 
burnt youth ; ' ' that means that everybody on 
board may come, from the captain to the cabin 
boy. We are bound for heaven. Christ is our 
pilot. The anchor is sure and steadfast. Come 
aboard, friends, before eight bells strike, and your 
time is up." No one felt like criticising this 
earnest lad, or objecting to his simple vernacular 
of the sea. He spake as the Spirit gave him ut- 
terance. So did they all. One young man asked 
counsel in regard to the rightfulness of his dis- 
charging some prescribed duties in a government 
office on the Sabbath mornings. The leader an- 
swered his question briefly, and a brother offered 
prayer that God would guide aright his perplexed 



The Model Prayer Meeting. 49 

child, would enable him to " do right even if 
it cost him his daily bread," and would deliv- 
er the land from Sabbath desecration in high 
places. 

When his prayer was ended, a tremulous, 
stammering voice was heard in the further room 
for a moment, and then it stopped. There was a 
breathless pause. Every one felt for the young 
beginner. Every one wanted to help him out. 
He began again, hesitated, stammered out a few 
words brokenly; at last he said, " Lord, thou 
knowest I cannot tell what I want to say, but 
thou hearest even what I do not say. Have 
mercy on my poor soul, for Christ's sake. Amen." 
An audible sob broke out throughout the whole 
apartment. Then outspoke a gray-headed vete- 
ran, in tones like old Andrew Peden's among the 
Covenanters of the Highlands. The old man 
went into his prayer like Gideon into the battle 
with Midian. The sword of faith gleamed in his 
right hand ; the light shot forth as from the shiv- 
ered pitchers, and the whole hosts of doubts, and 
sins, and fears were scattered like chaff at the 
breath of the gale. How he took us all on eagles' 

wings heavenward ! How he enthroned the glo- 
5 



50 The Model Prayer Meeting. 

rified Lamb ! And the close of his rapturous out- 
break was in a "sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs, 
and harping symphonies." 

When the old man's prayer was ended, (it was 
the seventh prayer offered during that one busy, 
blessed hour,) the time had arrived for closing 
the service. The leader touched his bell, and 
read the doxology. We were all in the very 
frame for that most celestial of strains — glorious 
Old Hundred — that magnificent battle-hymn to 
which Luther marched against principalities and 
powers, and spiritual weakness in high places. 
Immortal is that strain, like him who gave it 
birth. There is not a Christian's tomb in all our 
land where repose not the silent lips that once 
sang that matchless tune. If any of earth's mu- 
sic shall be heard amid the " new songs " of Par- 
adise, be assured that the one surviving piece 
that shall outlive the judgment will be that " king 
of sacred airs," Old Hundred. With this ancient 
song upon our lips, we closed our service, spent 
a few moments in hand-shakings, in introducing 
strangers, in cordial heart-greetings : and so end- 
ed a model prayer meeting. 

The spirit that pervaded the meeting was too 



The Model Prayer Meeting. 51 

intensely earnest for phraseology as sapless and 
dry as last year's corn husks, and at the same 
time too reverential for affectations and flippancy. 
We lingered about the hallowed spot, loth to go 
away. But for the rigid rule that restricted the 
service to a single hour, we might have tarried 
until midnight, praying and singing praises to 
God. And as we turned reluctantly homeward, 
more than one gratefully said, " Truly the Lord 
was in this place." Why may not every church 
of Christ have one or more just such model 
prayer meetings? 



Jesus Only. 



IT is very probable that Christ's transfiguration 
took place upon Mount Hermon. The out- 
look from that summit carried the eye from 
Lebanon, with its diadem of glittering ice, south- 
ward to the silvery mirror of Gennesaret ; but it 
was not that vision of natural beauty that the 
disciples looked at chiefly ; they saw " Jesus 
only." Two illustrious prophets, Moses and 
Elijah, had just made their miraculous appear- 
ance on the top of the mount ; but neither of 
these mighty men appeared any longer to the dis- 
ciples' view ; they saw no man save Jesus only." 
In this expression we find the clue to the 
power of apostolic preaching. That solitary fig- 
ure on the mount became the central figure to 
the eyes and hearts of the apostles. One Person 
occupied their thoughts ; one Person filled all 
their most effective discourses It was no such 



Jesus Only. 53 

benevolent charlatan as poor Renan has lately 
attempted to portray ; it was the omnipotent and 
holy Son of God. They saw in him " God man- 
ifest in the flesh ;" they saw in him an infinite 
Redeemer, a divine model, an ever- living inter- 
cessor and friend. And they saw no one save 
Jesus only. Paul gave utterance to the heart 
of the whole apostolic brotherhood when he said, 
" I determined to know nothing among you save 
Jesus Christ and him crucified." Has not this 
been the key-note to the best sermons of the best 
ministers ever since ? Is not that the most pow- 
erful sermon that is the most luminous with 
Christ? Depend upon it that the pulpit, the 
Sabbath-school, and the volume which God hon- 
ors with the richest success are those which pre- 
sent " no man save Jesus only." 

Here too is a clue to the best method of deal- 
ing with awakened and inquiring hearts. We 
are too prone to send the unconverted to a prayer 
meeting, or to reading good books, or to listen- 
ing to some popular Boanerges. The experiences 
of many a troubled inquirer have been somewhat 
like those of the woman to whom a faithful min- 
ister once said : K * 



54 Jesus Only. 

" Have you been in the habit of attending 
church ?" 

" Yes, I have been to every church in town ; 
but the little comfort I get soon goes away again, 
and leaves me as bad as before." 

;: Do you read the Bible at home?" 

" Sir, I am always reading the Bible; some- 
times I get a little comfort, but it soon leaves me 
as wretched as ever." 

" Have you prayed for peace ?" 

" Oh! sir, I am praying all the daylong; 
sometimes I get a little peace after praying, but 
I soon lose it. I am a miserable woman." 

" Now, madam, when you went to church, or 
prayed, or read jour Bible, did you rely on these 
means to give you comfort ?" 

"I think I did." 

" To whom did you pray " 

" To God, sir ; to whom else should I pray ?" 

" Now, read this verse, ' Come unto me and I 
will give you rest." Jesus said this. Have you 
gone to Jesus for rest ?" 

The lady looked amazed, and tears welled up 
into her eyes. Light burst in upon her heart, 
like unto the light that flooded Mount Hermon 



Jesus Only. $$ 

on the transfiguration morn. Everything else 
that she had been looking at — church, Bible, 
mercy-seat, and minister — all disappeared, and to 
her wondering, believing eyes there remained no 
man save Jesus only. She was liberated from 
years of bondage on the spot. The scales fell 
from her eyes, and the spiritual fetters from her 
soul. Jesus only could do that work of deliver- 
ance ; but he did not do it until she looked to 
him alone. 

This incident — which has been given at length 
in one of the American Tract Society's narratives 
— reached us during the first years of our minis- 
try. With this " open secret" in our hand, we 
approached the first Roman Catholic that ever at- 
tended upon our preaching. He had turned his 
troubled eye for a long time to the Holy Virgin 
and to sainted martyrs in the calendar. He had 
been often to a priest ; never to a Saviour. We 
set before him Jesus only. He looked up and 
saw the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of 
the world. " My Romish mother," said he to us, 
" would burn up my Bible if she knew I had one 
in my house." But she could not burn out the 



56 Jesus Only. 

blessed Jesus from his emancipated and happy- 
heart. 

Next we took this simple revelation to a poor 
invalid of threescore and ten. His sight was 
failing, and the vision of his mind was as blurred 
and dim as the vision of his body. We set be- 
fore him, in our poor way, Jesus only. The old 
man could hardly see the little grandchild who 
read aloud to him. . But he could see Jesus with 
the eye of faith. The patriarch who had hard- 
ened under seventy years of sin became a little 
child. The skepticism of a lifetime vanished 
when the Holy Spirit revealed to his searching, 
yearning look the divine form of a Saviour cru- 
cified. 

We never forgot these lessons learned in our 
ministerial boyhood. From that time to this, we 
have found that the only sure way of bringing 
light and peace to an anxious inquirer is to direct 
them away from themselves — away from rituali- 
ties and stereotyped forms — away from agencies 
of every kind — away from everything save Jesus 
only. John the Baptist held the essence of the 
Gospel on his tongue when he cried out, " Be- 
hold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin 



Jesus Only. 57 

of the world." My anxious friend, be assured 
that you never will find pardon for the past, and 
hope for the future ; you never will know how to 
live, or be prepared to die, until you look to Je- 
sus only. 

Herd is a hint too for desponding Christians. 
You are harassed with doubts. Without are fight- 
ings, and within are fears. Why ? Because you 
have tried to live on frames and feelings, and 
they ebb and flow like the sea-tide. You have 
rested on past experiences and not on a present 
Saviour. You have looked at yourself too much, 
and not to him who is made to you righteousness 
and full redemption. Do you long for light, 
peace, strength, assurance, and joy ? Then do 
your duty, and look to Jesus only. 

When the godly-minded Oliphant was on his 
dying bed, they read to him that beautiful pas- 
sage in the seventh chapter of Revelations, " And 
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 
(It is the passage which poor Burns could never 
read with a dry eye.) The old man exclaimed, 
" Perhaps that is so. The Bible tells me that 
there is no weeping in heaven ; but I know I shall 
cry the first time I see my Saviour." He was 



58 Jesus Only. 

right. The first object that would enchain his 
view on entering the gates of glory, would not be 
the jewelled walls, or the shining ranks of the ser- 
aphim. It would not be the parent who bore 
him, or the pastor who taught him the way of 
life. But amid the myriad glories, the thousand 
wonders of that wonderful world of light and joy, 
the believer's eye, in its first enrapturing vision, 
shall "see no man save Jesus only." 



C*^^U3 



Love's Labor Light. 

THAT is a beautiful picture which is revealed 
to us through the lens of the following pas- 
sage : " And Jacob served seven years for 
Rachel ; and they seemed unto him but a few 
days, for the love he had to her." The picture 
before us is of a Syrian valley, with flocks and 
herds sprinkled over the green pasturage and 
along the uplands. Among them, with watchful 
eye, moves a young Hebrew shepherd. Fear 
sent him hither from his father's home beyond 
the solemn Euphrates. But love has drawn him 
too. To woo the beautiful daughter of Laban, as 
well as to escape a resentful brother, he has come. 
He has made a bargain to watch Laban's flocks 
for seven long years ; and his wages are to be — 
a wife. So, as he tends his fleecy charge beneath 
the palm-trees, his thoughts are of her who comes 
out occasionally to the well's mouth, and rewards 



60 Love's Labor Light. 

him with a glimpse of her countenance. At 
eventide, as the maidens grind the grain, it is her 
voice — singing at the barley-mill — which heals 
the hardships of the sultry day, and sends him 
happy to Lis rest. And so we read that the seven 
years seemed unto him but a few days, for the 
love he had to her. Within himself there was a 
relief from every load, a solace for every sorrow, 
a perpetual stimulant to toil and patience. He 
lived on love. 

Is there not a principle here worth every Chris- 
tian's study ? The principle is this — the service 
of God is only pleasant, is only thorough, and is 
only effective, when it is a labor of love. Our 
heart must be in our religion, and our religion in 
our heart, or else it is the most toilsome of drudg- 
eries, and the most intolerable of hypocrisies. 
Here lies the simple reason why the duties of 
Christianity become so irksome to many a church 
member. He has no heart in them. It is all 
toil and task-work. He tugs at it as a galley- 
slave tugs at the oar. He takes his Bible as he 
would take a dose of medicine. He goes to his 
closet as an anchorite clambers to his mountain 
cave, or to the top of his pillar. The church-bell 



Love's Labor Light 61 

rings him to the sanctuary, but no answering bell 
in his own grateful soul responds, " come, and 
let us worship." He hungers not, he thirsts 
not for the Word of Life. Money-giving for 
Christ's work is to him a downright robbery, and 
he flings his unwilling pence at the Lord's treas- 
ury, as if he would say, " There it is, since you 
will have it ; when will these calls of charity be 
done with ?" The whole routine of his external 
performances in the church is gone through slav- 
ishly, carelessly, hypocritically, as if the sharp 
eye of a taskmaster were upon him, and the lash 
of an overseer were cracked about his head. 

My brother ! there is but one way to become 
a happy, thorough, effective Christian. Whether 
you are a pastor watching over the church-fold, 
or a Sabbath-school teacher tending the little 
flock of your class, or a parent guarding the fire- 
side lambs, or a philanthropist keeping guard 
over the rights of the neglected, the ignorant, the 
guilty, or the oppressed, you must learn to work 
heartily. A man who sincerely loves the Lord 
Jesus Christ will love to labor for him. He will 
welcome toil. He will bend cheerfully to every 

burthen, rejoicing to be Christ's willing bondman 
6 



62 Love's Labor Light. 

— and Christ's "freedman" too. For to him 
liberty is but the possibility of duty. 

Would you then be a happy Christian ? Get 
the heart full of Jesus. Would you be a thor- 
ough Christian ? Get the heart full of Jesus. 
Would you be safe from spiritual declension ? 
Then " keep yourself in the .love of God." Put 
your love of the Saviour so deep down that it 
shall underlie all selfishness — so deep that the 
frosts of unbelief cannot reach it — so deep that 
the devil cannot come at it — so deep that the 
friction of daily life cannot wear upon it — so deep 
that when even the powers and passions of our 
nature are dried up by old age, this hidden foun- 
tain shall give out its undying stream. 

It is said that artesian wells never go dry ; but 
when the torrid heats of July are parching the 
upper surface into drifts of dust, there is an un- 
exhausted vein far down below that gushes up 
through its rocky tube, and defies the thirsty 
sunbeams to quench its perennial flow. So does 
Christ within us break up through our dusty, 
selfish humanity, and overflow our nature w T ith 
graces, until even the desert-spot becomes a gar- 
den of the Lord. 



Love's Labor Light. 63 

Again we say, if you would be a lightsome la- 
borer in Christ's vineyard, you must love your 
Redeemer. Do you love him now but a little? 
Then despise not the clay of small things. You 
have made a good beginning. There may have 
been but a slight heart-beat in Jacob's breast 
when he first met Rachel at the well's mouth in 
Haran. But that young affection grew into a 
love that made the happy hours to tread on roses. 
And it was with a breaking heart that he hung 
over his dying wife as she lay moaning in wo- 
man's sorest sorrow on the wayside to Bethlehem. 
So may your love to Jesus grow until it becomes 
the master-passion of the soul — until it conquers 
lust and subdues accursed self — grow until you 
enjoy the blessed service of the Master — until 
there is nothing on earth you desire beside him — 
until you can exclaim with the victorious apostle, 
''lam persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 
depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God ivhich is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord P 



Quench not the Spirit. 

IF a party of Arctic explorers, after a long, 
perilous march through driving snow-storms, 
were to find themselves under the lee of a 
rock or an ice-hummock for the night, how care- 
fully would they draw forth the single match or 
bit of tinder that was to keep them from perish- 
ing. All depends on that one match. How they 
hover round it to protect the first faint flicker 
from the gale. "Be careful, be c-a-r-e-f-u-l" 
says the anxious leader, with suspended breath, 
as he watches the spark light into a little blaze, 
and the blaze slowly creep up until it takes hold 
of a dry faggot, and begins to ignite the heap of 
drift-wood. To put out that flame is suicide. 
To fan it is the first instinct of self-preservation. 
And when the seed of fire has grown into a crack- 
ling flame, illuminating rock, and ice, and fur- 



Quench not the Spirit. 6_J 

clad men with a ruddy glow, they all thank God 
that no careless hand was permitted to quench 
the fire on which their lives depended. 

This scene illustrates the graphic simile of 
Paul, " Quench not the Spirit." It is equiva- 
lent to his saying to the sinner, put not out the 
pre which God's Spirit is kindling in thy heart. 
The figure will bear study. In whatever way we 
look at it we find it full of suggestion and most 
solemn admonition. Why are inquiring souls to 
take heed not to " quench the Spirit." 

I. Because the Holy Spirit is the soul's en- 
light ener. Put not out the light is the apostle's 
tender caution. A sinner's heart is by nature 
enveloped in darkness. As absence of light 
makes darkness, so absence of spiritual knowledge 
makes ignorance, and absence of godliness makes 
depravity. This midnight of the heart can only 
be illuminated by the incoming of the Spirit. It 
is one of the blessed offices of Him whom " the 
Father sends to teach you all things," and to 
" guide you into all truth." It is his work to 
reveal the iniquity of the heart, It is his to 
show the sinner his besetting sin, and to make 

known its exceeding heinousness. It is his, too. 
6* 



66 Quench not the Spirit. 

to reveal the way of salvation. As the Alpine 
traveller at night needs the lantern at his waist to 
find his way to the hospice, so does the inquirer 
for salvation need the divine Enlightener to guide 
his trembling footsteps to Calvary. Put not out 
the light. 

II. The Spirit resembles fire, in the second 
place, because it melts the flinty heart. A " heart 
of stone" is the Bible's description of the stub- 
born sinner. There is no contrition, no tender- 
ness, no godly love in it. It needs melting. Go 
into a vast iron-foundry, and witness the extra- 
ordinary processes by which fire conquers the 
solid metal until it consents to be cast, or stamp- 
ed, or rolled into the form which the artificer de- 
sires. This is a type of God's moral foundry 
(as seen in a revival of religion), where an ob- 
durate heart is first so softened as to feel the 
truth ; then to weep over sin ; then to be ductile 
and malleable ; then so flexible as to be " formed 
anew" into a shape that pleases the Lord Jesus 
Christ. This melting process is wrought by the 
Holy Ghost. Just what the fire accomplishes in 
the foundry the infinite Spirit of love accomplishes 
in a convicted soul. As the Holy Spirit alone 



Quench not the Spirit. 67 

can melt you into penitence, alone can subdue 
your stubbornness, and mould you into obedience 
to God, as he alone can transform your hard, un- 
grateful deformity into the u beauty of holiness," 
we entreat you, awakened friend, quench not the 
fire. 

III. The third office of the Spirit is that of a 
purifier. Have you ever witnessed the smelting 
process by which the dross is burnt away and the 
pure metal is made to flow into the clay recepta- 
cle ? Then you have witnessed a vivid illustra- 
tion of the Spirit's work in sanctification. How 
the corruption runs away under the blessed action 
of divine love ! How the dross goes off ! How 
the graces burnish into brightness ! How the 
pure gold is eliminated ! Oh, ye who yearn for a 
better life, for conquests over indwelling sin, for 
the incoming of holiness, as ye love your souls, 
quench not the Spirit. 

IV. One other agency of God's Spirit we 
glance at ; it is the heating, soul-propelling pow- 
er. Every heart is more or less frozen by selfish- 
ness — more or less torpid to the claims of heavenly 
benevolence. Now, what is accomplished in the 
engine-room of an ocean-steamer when a flame is 



68 Quench not the Spirit. 

kindled under the dead mass of coal in the fur- 
nace, is accomplished in the cold, selfish heart of 
man, when the divine Spirit brings in the new 
inspiration of love to Christ. The mass kindles J 
the soul moves ; the powers begin their play • 
the whole man gets in motion ; and as long as the 
fire of holy love burns on in the depths of the 
soul, so long do men see the steady, triumphant 
march of a life of . radiant zeal and Christ-like 
philanthropy. This was the fire from heaven 
that descended at Pentecost. It was the young 
Church's inspiration that propelled it to the spir- 
itual conquest of the globe. Here is the one 
greatest, sorest, saddest want of our modern 
Churches. Pulpit and pew need alike the bless- 
ed propulsion which God's Spirit alone can 
kindle. 

Do you not see by this time, my unconverted 
friend, how much your very life depends on the 
Spirit's influence? Already have you felt his 
power. In all your compunctions for past wast- 
ed hours of selfishness and sin — in all your as- 
pirings for a better life — you felt that power. 
He it was who thrilled you under that solemn 
discourse in God's house, until your conscience 



Quench not the Spirit. 69 

smote as the reed is smitten under a mighty wind. 
He startled you on that bed of sickness, when 
eternity came near and looked you in the face. 
He melted your heart under the pleading appeal 
and the touching prayer of that faithful friend, 
who yearned for your salvation. He came with 
that affectionate pastor to your fireside, and 
warned you to flee from the wrath to come. He 
spake to you out of that hollow tomb that opened 
for your departed, and bade you prepare to meet 
your God. A monitor has he been to you : he 
waits to be a teacher, a comforter, a purifier, a 
sanctifier of your soul. Dare you grieve him 
away ? Oh, as you value your present peace 
and your hope of future salvation — as you desire 
life,, and joy, and glory everlasting — as you 
would shun the agonies of hell and secure the 
blessedness of heaven — we entreat you, quench 
not the Spirit ! 

Said an old man once to his pastor : 
" When I was seventeen, I began to feel deep- 
ly at times, and this continued for two or three 
years ; but I determined to put it off till I should 
be settled in life. After I was married, I reflect- 
ed that the time had come when I had promised 



jo Quench not the Spirit. 

to attend to religion ; but I had bought this farm, 
and I thought it would not suit me to become re- 
ligious till it was paid for, as some time would 
have to be devoted to attend church, and also 
some expense. I then resolved to put it off ten 
years ; but when the ten years came round, I 
thought no more about it. I often try to think, 
but I cannot keep my mind on the subject one 
moment." I urged him by all the terrors of dy- 
ing an enemy of God, to set about the work of 
repentance. " It is too late," said he ; "I be- 
lieve my doom is sealed ; and it is just that it 
should be so, for the Spirit strove long with me, 
but I refused." I then turned to his children, 
young men and young women, who were around 
him, and entreated them not to put off the subject 
of religion, or grieve the Spirit of God in their 
youthful days. The old man added, " Mind that. 
If I had attended to it then, it would have been 
well with me to-day ; but now it is too late." 

Alas for him ! He had quenched the Spirit. 
The last ray of light was extinguished, and 
through the darkness of a spiritual midnight he 
•oped his way down to his hopeless grave. 







Show Your Colors 

THE name of Captain Hedley Vicars, the 
Christian hero of the Crimean War, is 
familiar to most of our readers. On the 
morning after his conversion he bought a large 
Bible, and placed it open on the table of his 
room. He was determined that an open Bible, 
for the future, should be his "colors." " It was 
to speak for me," he said, "before I was strong 
enough to speak for myself." His military com- 
rades came in, and laughed at him ; nicknamed 
him the Methodist ; hinted to him that he had 
better not turn "hypocrite;" but in spite of a 
perpetual guerilla warfare of sneers and scoffs, 
he nobly stood by his colors. Having "clean 
hands, he waxed stronger and stronger." In 
time he became a spiritual power in his regiment, 
simply by a steadfast, bold, decided witnessing 
for Christ. 



72 Show Your Colors. 



To his early disciples Jesus Christ said, 
"Whosoever shall confess me before men, him 
will I confess also before my Father which is in 
heaven." Solemn injunction, solemnly heard; 
heard as with chains already on their wrists, and 
the loud crack of the scourge echoing through 
prison corridors. But Christ did not mean this 
command only for his original apostles. It was 
intended for all times, and for every man who 
wishes to be saved. It is intended especially for 
a timid, compromising class, — unhappily a large 
class, — who hang about the debatable ground be- 
tween Satan's rebel provinces and Christ's loyal 
realm. They are the people who want to be on 
Christ's side in eternity, but are not exactly will- 
ing to be on his side in this Christ- despising 
world. Before this vacillating, man-fearing class, 
Christ lays down sharp, clear lines. He says, 
" He that is not for me is against me." And no 
man is for him who does not confess him. 

Confession is a broad, far-reaching word, as 
the Saviour employed it. It refers, first, to the 
heart, then to the lips, then to the life. Whoso- 
ever would be saved must embrace Christ in the 
heart; this was conversion. Next, he must 



Show Your Colors. 73 

acknowledge him with the tongue : this was con- 
fession, or what we style a "profession of faith." 
Chieftest of all, he was to honor Christ by his 
daily living : and this was vital Christianity. 

Jesus did not refer to the first point when he 
gave the command to confess him " before men.'''' 
He presupposed the secret interior work of con- 
version ; he presupposed the root ; what he de- 
manded was the leafing-out and the fruit-hearing 
of the tree. He demanded a bold, resolute, out- 
spoken, love-inspired acknowledgment of him as 
their Saviour and their king, from every man 
who expected to be acknowledged in turn before 
the Father and the holy angels. This confession 
was to be open, spontaneous and sincere. Has 
the reader of this paragraph never made such an 
acknowledgment of Christ? Then, my friend, 
you must not be astonished if Christ refuses to 
recognise you in the last decisive hour of judg- 
ment. It will then be too late to take the oath 
of loyalty. He who does not confess Christ in 
this world, will be lost in the world to come. 

I. In nearly every congregation there are a 
few halting, timid, irresolute persons, who have 
a trembling faith in Christ, but who do not come 
1 



74 Show Your Colors. 

out decidedly and confess him. They may be 
Christians, but the world is not allowed to know 
it. They carry dark lanterns. " Shining 
lights" they certainly are not. No one is the 
better for their secret, clandestine attempts to 
steal along quietly toward heaven without letting 
any one overhear their footsteps. Now this is a 
miserable — we are almost ready to say contempti- 
ble — mode of living, this concealment of the colors 
when danger threatens, this following along after 
the church, with a vague hope of being counted 
in among God's people when heaven's prizes are 
distributed to the faithful. We do not say that 
no one can be saved who does not openly join 
some Christian church. But we do say that the 
person who expects Christ to acknowledge him in 
heaven, and yet refuses to acknowledge Christ 
" before men," is a self-convicted coward; and 
while disobeying his Master's orders, has no 
right to expect his Master's blessing. After 
fifteen years of pastoral observation, we have 
come to the conclusion that every day spent by the 
genuine convert outside of the church of Christ 
is almost a day lost ; he loses the sense of re- 
sponsibility that he needs to feel : he loses the 



Show Your Colors. 75 

opportunities of doing good ; he loses in self- 
respect, in the respect of others ; he loses the 
approbation of Him who has so impressively said, 
" Whosoever is ashamed of me before men, of 
him will I be ashamed when I shall come in my 
own glory." When God gives conversion he 
demands confession. To be effective and use- 
ful, this must be prompt, open, hearty, and de- 
cided. 

II. But the confession does not end with the 
public acknowledgment of Christ before the 
church. It only begins there. This is the one 
decisive step, to be followed by a thousand other 
steps in the same direction. We do know, how- 
ever, of many a church member whose single 
solitary act of loyalty to Christ was their stand- 
ing up to respond to a church covenant before 
the pulpit ; from that moment onward all that the 
church had of them was their idle name on the 
roll. Like too many of the boasted recruits 
in new regiments, they enlisted, drew their 
''bounty," and then "straightway are they 
heard of no more." In the campaign for Christ 
and the truth, they never answer to the roll-call 
of duty : it is very certain that their names will 



76 Show Your Colors. 

not be called when the victorious Immanuel an- 
nounces the rewards to his faithful followers, on 
" the sea of glass like unto pure gold/' 

A true Christian will rejoice to confess Christ 
every where and before every body. He will aim 
to make his daily life lustrous and legible. He 
will glorify his Master by every-day acts of loy- 
alty and Jove. He will live Christ. And when 
duty bids him open his lips, he is ready to speak 
for Christ. At such a time silence would be 
treason. The Christian who will sit with sealed 
lips when his Master is assailed, when religion is 
attacked, when wickedness is broached and de- 
fended, when truth is denounced, is a denier of 
his Lord, as guilty as Simon Peter in Pilate's 
hall. 

It is pitiful to observe what cowardly shifts 
some professed Christians resort to in order to 
avoid an acknowledgment of their loyalty. We 
are all guilty of too much time-serving ; too much 
concealment of truth: of too much compromise 
with Christ's enemies. The boldest are not bold 
enough ; and the cowards are as much despised 
by themselves as loathed by their Master in 
heaven. When will we learn that the only 



Show Your Colors. 77 

course for a Christian is to "stand up for 
Jesus "? Men expect it of us ; they in turn de- 
spise us for our shamefacedness, and doubt the 
sincerity of our professions. 

We began this brief article with an incident 
from military life. We close it with another. 
" Last night," said a Christian soldier to his 
chaplain, ' ' in my barrack, before going to bed, 
I knelt down and prayed, when suddenly my 
comrades raised a loud laugh, and began to throw 
boots and clothes at me." "Well," replied the 
chaplain, "suppose you defer your prayers till 
after you retire, and then silently lift up your 
heart to God." 

Meeting him soon after, the chaplain said, 
" You took my advice, I suppose : how did it 
answer?" "Sir," replied the soldier, "I did 
take your advice for two or three evenings, but I 
began to think it looked like denying my Sa- 
viour ; so I once more knelt down and prayed as 
at first." " What followed ?" " Why, sir, not 
one of them laughs now. The whole fifteen 
now kneel down too, and I pray with them !" 

"I felt ashamed of myself for my cowardly 
advice," said the chaplain, when relating the in- 



78 Show Your Colors. 

cident; "that young soldier was bolder and 
wiser than myself." Yes, and he might have 
added that the sermon which the godly private 
preached to his fellow-soldiers by that simple act, 
was a more impressive one than any discourse 
they were likely to hear from such a chaplain. 
Vicar's motto was the true one, — "God's Word 
shall be my colors." 



Somebody's Son. 

[For New Year's Day.] 

A RUN AW AY horse was one day seen dash- 
ing through the streets of New Haven at 
a terrific rate, dragging a wagon that con- 
tained a small lad who was screaming with fright. 
The wagon brought up against the sidewalk with 
a fearful crash. A crowd hurried to the spot. 
One old lady, with cap-strings flying, rushed out 
into the street, although her daughter exclaimed, 
" Mother, mother, don't get into the crowd ; you 
cant do any good." Seeing her agitation, a lady 
who was passing by kindly inquired, " Is he your 
son ?" " Oh no !" replied the true-hearted ma- 
tron, "but he is somebody's son" 

The good mother was ready enough to lend a 
hand to save somebody's boy who was in danger 
of death ; but we fear that there is many a ma- 



8o Somebody's Son. 

tron and many a daughter, who, during the ap- 
proaching holiday festivities, "will lend a hand to 
lead somebody's sons right toward destruction ! 
They are already planning a Christmas party or 
a New Tear's entertainment : and in their liberal 
bill of fare will be included a full supply of cham- 
pagne and sherry, perhaps, too, of hot punch and 
brandy. These are days of fast living ; money 
comes easy : who cares ? Grood friends ! there 
are many of us who care for our children if we 
do not for your purses ; and before you set forth 
those attractive poisons, suffer me to make an 
honest appeal in behalf of one hundred thousand 
tempted young men. 

I. Let me say to you that true hospitality does 
not require intoxicating liquors on such occasions 
— nor on any occasion. ~\Ye honor the kindly 
spirit which, on the birthday of the year, pre- 
pares a liberal entertainment. We honor the 
hospitality which flings wide the door to all who 
wish to come in and enjoy it. But the well fur- 
nished markets and groceries of every town have 
an ample store of l: creature-comforts" without 
drawing upon the liquor-cellars and the wine- 
vaults. There are many drinks both palatable 



Somebody's Son. 8l 

and proper that never cause redness of the eyes, 
or thickness of speech, or delirium of the brain. 
Under their influence, young men do not reel on 
the side- walks, or mistake the door-plates of their 
friends, or venture on silly impertinences toward 
the ladies who entertain them. Under their in- 
fluence nobody's son is carried home drunk — to 
shame and rend a parent's heart. But the per- 
nicious custom of wine-giving and punch-brewing 
on New Year's Day produces many a sad scene 
of excess and inebriation. On all festive occa- 
sions temptation grows strong, and self-restraint 
grows weak. On every New Year's Day, hos- 
pitable private dwellings are turned into drinking- 
houses. Young men enter them with flushed 
faces, and with tongues quite too rapid for pro- 
priety. Many a merchant's clerk has whetted an 
evil appetite that has cost him a valuable situa- 
tion. A returned officer who went out last New 
Year's Day to receive the congratulations of his 
friends, found the decanters more fatal than rebel 
shells, and when he reeled home, his shame- 
stricken family would rather have received him 
wounded and bleeding from the battle-field. He 
was somebody's son — and somebody's husband 



82 Somebody's Son. 



too. Friends ! you have no moral right thus to 
tamper with other people's appetites, or to rob 
other households of their hopes and their happi- 
ness. " Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to 
his neighbor !" 

II. As a second reason against offering strong 
drinks on holidays or at any social entertainment, 
we would urge that many persons are confirmed 
by them in habits of intoxication. Social drink- 
ing, yes, and drunkenness, were never more pre- 
valent than now. There are members of my own 
church, probably, too, of most other churches, 
who are already sliding insensibly over that 
u glass railroad" whose smooth track leads 
downward to perdition. Thousands of young 
men are facing an enemy more deadly than ever 
frowned from the heights of Fredericksburg. 
With such young men a contest is now waging 
between conscience and appetite. They see their 
danger. They realize, in their calm moments, 
that they will soon lose their self-control, and are 
perilling their places, their health, their lives, and 
their undying souls. These young men enter 
your dwellings with a sharp conflict going on be- 
tween their sense of right and their appetite or 



Somebody's Son. 83 

their regard for fashion. If no intoxicating cup 
is held out to them, they are comparatively safe. 
They will not seek the drink, unless the drink 
seeks them. But one glass may ruin them. 
On the summit of a hill in a Western state is a 
court-house so situated that the rain-drops that 
fall on one side of the roof descend into Lake Erie, 
and thence through the St. Lawrence into the 
Atlantic ; the drops on the other side trickle 
down from rivulet to river until they reach the 
Ohio and the Mississippi and enter the ocean by 
the Gulf of Mexico. A faint breath of wind de- 
termines the destination of these rain-drops for 
three thousand miles. So a single act determines 
sometimes a human destiny for all time and for 
eternity ! A fashionable young man partially 
reformed from drinking habits came home to his 
father's house, rejoicing in his emancipation. His 
gay, light-hearted sister thoughtlessly proposed a 
glass of wine "to drink his safe return." He 
was excited and off his guard : he yielded, and 
the single glass rekindled a thirst that carried 
him back again into drunkenness. The hand 
that should have sustained him laid him low. If 
all the ruined men who have first received the 



84 Somebody's Son. 

fatal glass from woman's hand could utter their 
testimony, how many a drunkard's grave would 
become vocal with terrible upbraidings ! Surely 
one would think that woman had already suffered 
enough from the poison of this adder to make her 
refuse to touch the cup that conceals his serpent 
fang. 

Mothers ! fathers ! it is not only somebody's 
son who is in danger. There is a boy nearer 
home who is watching your example. The dar- 
ling who nestled in your own arms may be the 
victim of the glass you offer to others. And how 
dare you warn your own children against dissipa- 
tion when they see the decanter on your own 
sideboard, and are confronted by the tempter on 
your own tables ? You may remember the anec- 
dote which Dr. Lyman Beecher loved to tell of 
the London clergyman who, while walking the 
street, saw a loaded dray coming on rapidly to- 
ward a little school-girl who was just crossing 
the way. The foremost horse was almost upon 
her. Forgetting self he rushed into the street — 
caught the child in his arms — bore her safely to 
the sidewalk, and, as her bonnet fell aside and 
she looked up with her pale face to see her deliv- 



Somebody's Son. 85 

erer, the good man looked down into the face of 
his own little daughter ! In attempting to save 
somebody's child he saved his own. Banish then 
the wine-cup from your house, and you may pre- 
serve not only somebody's son from redemption, 
but also the lad whom your dear wife taught to 
say his prayers at her knee. God send to you a 
Happy New Year ! and may we all make it a 
day of new consecration to temperance, to liberty, 
to patriotism, and to the cause of Christ. 



8 



<^£S^s^a^ 



The Inexhaustible Barrel. 

" T DECLARE," said Deacon Worthy, as he 
touched up the old gray mare on his way 
home from church : u I declare if I believe 
that Parson Honeywood's sermon-barrel will ever 
giv' out. It is like the widder's barrel in Scripter. 
Now there was Parson Leane, who used to preach 
for us; he allers gin us the same sermon, no 
matter which end of the barrel he took it out of ; 
and as we sot pretty close to the meetin'-house 
door, it got to be mighty thin preachin' by the 
time it got back to us. But Parson Honeywood 
has bin here going on twenty years, and his ser- 
mons come out fresher and fresher every Sunday. 
Wife, I wish your butter-firkin would keep as 
sweet through the winter." 

The good Deacon resolved that the first time 
he saw his minister go by, he would have a talk 
with him on the subject. So a few days after 



The Inexhaustible Barrel. 87 

— hailing the well-known old sorrel and parochial 
buggy as it jogged along — he left his plow and 
hurried to the roadside. After the usual me- 
teorological questions, the plain-spoken deacon 
blurted out — " Well, parson ; that Sunday morn- 
in' sermon was number one prime ; may I ask 
you which end of the barrel that come out on?" 
"I am glad the sermon suited you," replied the 
genial dominie — "for I got part of that at your 

house; part came from neighbor B 's, and 

part from the Widow R 's ; and one of the 

best hints in it came from seeing your boy Frank 
riding home on old gray from the pasture without 
any saddle or bridle. I picked up that sermon 
in one day of pastoral visiting." 

Parson Honeywood was a shrewd man, and a 
wise pastor. He had not many books ; (but the 
few he had were gold-mines ;) and his family in- 
creased faster than his library. His Bible he 
had at his finger's end ; there was not a line in 
it on which he had not made up his mind defi- 
nitely as to its meaning. It was his one book 
of heavenly knowledge. But he also had a book 
of human knowledge second only to it. In the 
morning he studied his Bible j and in the after- 



88 The Inexhaustible Barrel. 



noon, he sallied out with horse and buggy and 
studied his people. He rode with his eyes open, 
finding illustrations (like his Divine Master) from 
the birds of the air, from the flowers of the field, 
and the sower or harvester by the wayside. He 
lost nothing that he could turn to his purpose, for 
his mind was on his sermon all the week. If he 
saw a farmer letting his team " blow" under a 
roadside tree, he drew up and fell into a chat 
with him. He observed closely the man's style 
of thought — gave him a few words of good coun- 
sel, and drove on, leaving the farmer something to 
think of, and something to love his pastor for too. 
If he saw a boy on his way to school, he took the 
youngster into his buggy, told him one or two 
riddles, and then asked him several questions out 
of the Bible, which set the lad to studying when 
he got home. It was something for the lad to 
tell his school-fellows that he "rode to school 
with the minister;" the next Sunday he was 
pretty sure to keep awake through both the ser- 
mous. Such a man was, of course, ready for a 
talk with the limber-tongued Deacon Worthy, 
who pressed him close to know "what part of 
that sermon had been found at his house. For I 



The Inexhaustible Barrel. 89 

didn't know so much good could come out of 
Nazareth." 

"Well." replied the parson, "I was studying 
on the subject of Trusting God in times of 
trial. First I went to my Bible. That book 
never runs dry. As good old Dr. Spring down 
in New York says, l Men may be exhausted : the 
Bible never? I studied my text thoroughly. I 
compared Scripture with Scripture. I prayed 
over it, my dear brother ; for one hour of prayer 
is worth two hours of study for getting light on 
a subject. Then when I had committed what we 
ministers call our exegesis to paper, I sallied 
out to find my l practical observations' among our 
congregation. I rode down to your house, and 
your wife told me about her troubles in regard to 
the doctrine of assurance. From there I went 

over to neighbor B 's. He is terribly cut 

down since he failed in business. He told me that 
with the breaking down of his oldest son's 
health, and his own break-down in the store, he 
was hardly able to hold his head up, and he was 
beginning to feel rebellious toward his Heavenly 
Father. I gave him a word or two of cheer, and 
noted down in my mind just what his difficulties 



90 The Inexhaustible Barrel. 

were. From his store I went over to "Widow 

R 's, who had her usual lamentation over the 

death of "her old man," and needed a kind word 
of sympathy. She told me before I left that her 

daughter M had as yet found no peace, 

though her mind had been under deep conviction 
of sin for several weeks. I sat down and drew 
from her all her difficulties. Some of them were 
peculiar, and such as I never found treated in 
any book of theology, or in any Cases of Con- 
science. By the time I had finished my advice 
to her, and had read over to her a chapter out of 
Dr. Spencer's "Pastor's Sketches," (which I 
often carry in my buggy with me,) it was almost 
dark, and I hurried home. Before I went to bed, 
I worked all the material which I had gathered 
into my sermon. I took up all the doubts which 
were disturbing the minds of your good wife, and 

of neighbor B , and of Widow R and 

her anxious daughter. I studied out the solution 
of their difficulties from the Word of God, and 
then (without, of course, mentioning any names 
or making any personal allusions) I wove all 
their cases into my sermon. I knew that it 
would be certain to reach four people in the 



The Inexhaustible Barrel. 91 

church, and if it fitted them, it would probably- 
fit four times forty others. For after all, 
deacon, human nature is pretty much alike. If 
I can preach a discourse that will come home 
close to my own heart, I take it for granted that 
it will come equally close to every one in the 
house." 

"Yes, parson, some of your sermons cut a 
pretty broad swath. I often feel thou art the 
man, And when you teched so sharp the other 
Sunday on the liquor-trade, I saw that Squire 
P fairly looked white in the gills." 

" I preached on Temperance that day," replied 
Mr. Honey wood, "because I knew that more 
plain preaching was needed in these days, when 
the wine-bottle is stealing back again on the side- 
boards and tables even of church members. 
Then again I came to the subject in my exposi- 
tion of the passage, and my rule is, when I come 
to a subject in the Bible that folks don't like to 
hear about, I don't skip it. A good plowman 
never makes a balk, as you farmers say. If I 
come to slavery, or war, or liquor-drinking, or 
using false weights, in my course of Scripture- 
expounding, I give it just as the Word of God 



92 The Inexhaustible Barrel. 

declares it. If God says a thing is sinful, I try 
to say so too. The business of the minister of 
Christ is to unfold the whole Bible, its doctrines, 
its history, its biography, its every jot and title. 
He who preaches the whole Bible will reach, in 
time, the whole range of his people's spiritual 
necessities. He need never to fall into a rut. 
The Bible and the human heart are reservoirs 
that will always keep a minister's barrel full. 
But, deacon, your boy's harrow yonder is wait- 
ing for your plow to move on. I must not keep 
you any longer." 

" Well, parson, I have long been wantin' to ask 
you why your sermon-barrel never has giv' out." 

"Why, as to that," replied Parson Honey- 
wood, " I will tell you, as the great Dr. Bella- 
my once told the young clergyman who asked 
him what he should do to have matter for his dis- 
courses. The shrewd old man said, "Fill up 
the cask, Jill up the cask, fill up the cask ! 
Then, if you tap it anywhere, you get a good 
stream ; but if you put in but little, it will 
dribble, dribble, dribble, and you must tap, tap, 
tap, and get precious little after all.' Good 
afternoon, deacon." 



Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 

DEAR T : I have just been enjoying in 
the last volume of Washington Irving's 
Life his pleasant reminiscences of the lit- 
erary celebrities of Great Britain. Perhaps a 
few memories of some other notables — preserved 
by me from a visit to Europe in the year after 
graduation from college — may interest you and 
your Independent family. The first week after 
my arrival was spent in the exquisite Lake Dis- 
trict of Westmoreland. I gathered holly-leaves 
in the grounds of " Ellery," the shooting and 
boating-seat of old Christopher North ; I rowed 
past the homes of Bishop Watson and Mrs. He- 
mans, and put in at sunset to the " Salutation 
Inn" of Ambleside, where Coleridge, South ey 3 
and Wordsworth often stopped to ' ' have a crack 
wi," the broad- visaged landlord. In the twilight, 
Wordsworth trotted past the door, with a bunch 



94 Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 

of heather stuck in his " bonnet" and his white 
hair falling on his shoulders. The next morning 
I spent with him at Rydal Mount, in full view 
of the mountain-scenes that inspired him to his 
best poetry. In walking about his grounds, the 
poet-philosopher looked like a Berkshire county 
farmer — wore a blue coat and broad slouched 
white hat, and " goggles" bestriding his porten- 
tous nose. He was the patriarch of nature to the 
life. He spoke tenderly of Irving — sadly of poor 
South ey, who was then in ruins — and pointing 
toward " Dove's Nest," the former abode of Mrs. 
Hemans, he said "she was a most clever lady, 
but we never thought her very original." His 
quiet wife sat knitting at the door as he reentered 
his cottage. Nature's best interpreter since Cow- 
per, he now lies in the little Gothic church just 
under the hill. 

Reaching Edinburgh by way of ' ' Branksome 
Tower" and Abbotsford, I called at the house of 
Professor Wilson, in Gloucester place. But old 
Christopher had fled to escape from the small-pox, 
which had broken out among his domestics. 'He 
was famous for his carelessness in dress. Just then 
Edinburgh was laughing over a story of Wilson's 



Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 95 

being stopped on his way to lecture in the Uni- 
versity by a street-vender of old clothes, who 
wished to strike up a bargain. Christopher, with 
a loud laugh, caught at his threadbare trowsers 
and said, " What' 11 ye gi'e me for these ?" Not 
long before he had lost his lovely wife. Return- 
ing some essays unread to his students, he ten- 
derly apologized by saying, " I could hardly see 
to read in the valley of the shadow of death." 

Dr. Candlish was then the most conspicuous 
Edinburgh preacher after Chalmers. Prof. Ad- 
dison Alexander says that he heard from him the 
best discourse he listened to in Europe. Cand- 
lish reminded me of Van Bur en in the face — 
spoke with awkward vehemence — and delivered a 
powerful discourse on the Creation, which has 
ever since found a place in his volume on Genesis. 
In manner he was brusque and abrupt — quite in 
contrast with the Henry Clay-like bonhomie of 
Dr. Guthrie. Have you noticed that the London 
Times has pronounced Guthrie " the most elo- 
quent man in Europe ?" Sickness has now laid 
him aside — it is feared for ever. 

A few days passed at Sheffield gave me an op- 
portunity to meet James Montgomery, whose 



96 Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 

hymns will be sung when his elaborate longer 
poems will be forgotten. A small, refined, old 
man, with very silyery hair, he always looked 
oddly from being swathed up in a huge cravat 
that reached from his chin quite down on his 
breast. He was full of enthusiasm for America, 
and full of indignation too, that so many people 
would persist in confounding him with Robert 
Montgomery, whose poem on Satan has been im- 
paled (like a beetle in a museum) by the keen 
pen of Macaulay. " Only think," said the dear 
old poet to me, "that I should have just got a 
letter telling me that my poem on Satan is the 
best I ever wrote /" It was enough to make the 
gentle Moravian grow red in the face to have such 
a bantling laid at his front door. At Sheffield I 
heard a melting sermon from Pike, whose 
" Guide to Young Disciples" was once more read 
than now. John Angell James I expected to 
find thin, pale, and spirituelle ; but instead of 
this delicate ideal I found a bluff, broad John 
Bull, with the genial look of a sea-captain. No 
English minister of our time — unless it be Spur- 
geon — has brought the Gospel-essence into so 
many hearts. Was he not the model man of our 



Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 97 

modern pulpit — better than he would have been 
if he had even been a genius ? 

Twenty years ago Charles Dickens ruled the 
realm of fiction. We college boys joked in W el- 
lerisms, and wept over Oliver and Little Nell. 

With a letter from our friend Mrs. M , I 

sought the young lion in his lair ; but he was at 
the sea-side finishing his famous "American 
Notes," that bore so hard on our national saliva 
and slavery. On his return he called and in- 
vited me to his sanctum. It was graced with 
sketches and statuettes of Sam Weller, Pickwick, 
etc., and with a fine portrait of one whose sad 
domestic history he has told the outside world 
quite too much about. How handsome he was 
then ! With the great lustrous eyes that you 
saw yourself in — and the merry mouth wreathed 
with laughter — and the mass of glossy hair ! He 
overflowed in rapid talk, but shyed off from the 
least allusion to his works. His home was then 
happy with child-music. The bright-eyed little 
daughter who came in to give me a kiss before 
going to school, is now wedded to a son of Wilkie 
Collins, the novelist. Dickens' last words to me 

were, "Tell Mrs. M I have not forgotten 

9 



98 Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 

the slave." If Dickens had always written with 
the Bible at his side, and the religion of Wilber- 
force in his heart, he might have been the fore- 
most writer on social reforms in his day. 

Carlyle I would speak of, and a memorable 
walk with him ; but I have already pencilled it 
for your columns. Emerson's late apology for 
Carlyle's blundering assault on the free North is 
not satisfactory. ' He seems to forget that years 
ago Carlyle wrote rude and coarse jests against 
giving freedom to " Quashee" in the West Indies. 
He would have done the world better service if 
he had remembered more of the Westminster 
Catechism that his minister taught him in Ec- 
clefechan. German literature has improved Car- 
lyle's scholarship at the expense of his theology. 

One of the pleasantest mornings I spent in 
London was with the " Female Shakespeare," as 
her admirers were wont to call her — Joanna 
Baillie. I found her a bright-eyed, vivacious 
little old lady, with the apple-bloom still fresh on 
her cheek. Her first words were, " What a pity 
that you did not come sooner ; Thomas Campbell 
has just left the house." I was surprised to hear 
this ; for at that time the poet of Hohcnlinden 



Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 99 

had nearly ostracised himself from such society 
by his indulgence with the bottle. He grew ex- 
ceedingly coarse in conversation when steeped in 
strong ale ; and at the Literary Fund Dinner of 
that year, his friends held him in his chair to keep 
him from maudlin exhibitions of himself. It is 
painful to allude to this infirmity of the gifted 
man who has so enriched our literature ; but 
there is a solemn warning in it to every man of 
genius. Mrs. Baillie warmed into enthusiasm 
over Dr. Channing's essays (which she pro- 
nounced superior to any living writer's,) and ran 
on delightfully with chat about Sir Walter and 
Wordsworth. "There is no one left of the old 
circle but Wordsworth and myself," said she 
sadly. 

Melvillw&s at that time the planet of the Lon- 
don pulpit ; Spurgeon being still a school-boy, and 
the prophetic polybiblious Dr. Cumming yet un- 
known. I heard Melvill at his old Camberwell 
chapel, the crowd so great that I was glad to get 
a seat on the gallery-steps. He was a stylish 
man, and delivered an ornate sermon on Pride in 
a tone somewhat theatrical. His most splendid 
discourses were rewritten several times ; the im- 



loo Famous Men Twenty Years Ago. 

press of Chalmers is easily detected in some of 
them. The sermon on the Bible as an intellec- 
tual study is a master-piece. Thou shalt not 
steal from Melvill, is a commandment not always 
remembered in some minister's studies. But 
here I am at the end of my sheet without any 
sketch of Binney's preaching, or of pleasant even- 
ings at the cottage of Mrs. S. C. Hall, which I 
would like to have etched hurriedly. You may 
commit this rambling letter to the Balaam- 
basket, or to the columns of The Independent, 
as you may fancy. These twenty dead years 
have not left England's sky as thickly sown with 
stars as when I gazed up thither with my boyish 
eyes of wonder and delight. 



(P^G^s^D 



Little Sorrowful. 

" A ND Jabez was more honorable than his 
l\ brethren; and his mother called his 
name Jabez, saying because I bore him 
with sorrow." Through this little passage, as 
through a lens, we look back and see a sorrow- 
stricken Hebrew mother, yet pale and weak from 
chi Id-bear i in g, with a new-come infant in her 
arms. She puts the mark of her grief on the 
brow of her boy in the name she gave him. She 
calls him Jabez, which signifies " sorrowful." 
Why, we know not. Whether it was that she 
brought him into life with no common anguish, 
and at the peril of her own — or whether the 
time of his birth was the time of her own widow- 
hood, so that he had no father living to welcome 
him — or whatever the disaster that darkened her 
lot, so it was that she put the gloom of her own 
heart on the name of her darling. She called 
9* 



102 Little Sorrowful. 



him Sorrowful, and he kept the name to his 
djing hour. 

Short-sighted mother ! While she thought of 
her child as born in sorrow to bring her new 
anxieties and cares, while she baptised him in 
tears, lo ! this very object of her grief and solici- 
tude becomes the ornament and glory of her 
house ! He lives to outstrip all his brethren. 
The prayer recorded of him in the fourth chapter 
of Chronicles is one of the most beautiful in the 
whole Bible. God answered it all. His after 
career was so lofty and so beneficent that people 
must have wondered how he came to bear so 
doleful a name. None so happy — none so pros- 
perous — none so honored— as poor Little Sor- 
rowful! His history is like the April shower 
that begins in clouds and tears, but ends in bril- 
liant sun-bursts, and in rainbows painted on the 
sky. 

Now, we are all of us just as short-sighted as 
this Hebrew mother who named her boy from 
her fears and not from her faith, and at last 
found God better to her than she expected. We 
persist in naming things sorrows which prove to 
be blessings in disguise. We often congratulate 



Little Sorrowful. 103 

people on receiving what turns out to be their 
ruin. We quite as often condole with them over 
a lot which is fraught to them with blessings 
above all price. Let us be careful how we con- 
dole with those who are under the merciful dis- 
cipline of a loving God. We may make worse 
mistakes than was made by the mother of Jabez. 
Be careful how you condole with a man who has 
lost his fortune, or has been disappointed in his 
ambitious schemes. While his purse is becoming 
empty, his soul may be filling full with God's 
grace ; while he is walking through the vale of 
humiliation, he may be getting more of the 
" herb called hearfs-ease' into his bosom than 
he ever knew while on the giddy heights of pros- 
perity. Many a man has been bankrupted into 
heavenly riches. Be careful how you tell a sick 
friend that his sickness is an affliction — when it 
may be sent him to melt his heart, to alarm him 
into reflection, and to bring him to repentance. 
Many a man's sickness has given him an eternal 
health ; and his room of suffering has been the 
vestibule to Christ's favor, and to the inheritance 
of the saints. 

Let us be careful, too, in what terms we con- 



104 Little Sorrowful. 

dole with the weeping mother whose darling child 
has just found its angel- wings, and flown away 
to Paradise. If we wish to sorrow for any 
parent, let it be for her whose living child is de- 
based into an idol, or a frivolous, overdressed toy, 
or a hard, cunning self-seeker, or a self-indulgent 
tyrant, who shall yet break the heart of her who 
bore him. A thousand times over have I pitied 
more the mother of a living sorrow than I have 
pitied the mother "of a departed joy. Parents! 
spare your tears for those whom you have laid 
down to sleep in their narrow earth-beds, with 
the now withered rose-bud on their breasts. 
They are safe; Christ has them in his sinless 
school, where lessons of celestial wisdom are 
learned by eyes that never weep. Save your 
tears for your living children^ if they are yet 
living in their sins, untouched by repentance, un- 
feeling, and unconverted. Those of your family 
whom God considers dead are those who are yet 
dead in trespasses and guilt — alive to the world 
and the devil, but dead to the voice of Christ. 

How often do we cover our best blessings with 
a pall, while we decorate with garlands our temp- 
tations or the sources of our saddest sorrows or 



Little Sorrowful. 



105 



our spiritual shame ! Any one who had looked 
in upon the old patriarch Jacob on that gloomy 
evening while he was bewailing the absence of 
his sons in Egypt, would have heard the queru- 
lous complaint, "All these things are against 
me." He is rather a Jabez than a Jacob then. 
Joseph is not ; Simeon is not ; and they have 
carried away Benjamin, too, who bore in his 
boyish face the photograph of the beautiful 
Rachel, whom he had laid to her sleep by the 
wayside of Bethlehem. He calls his lot a sad 
one. But just at the door are the returning 
caravan who are bringing to him the sacks from 
Egypt's granaries, and the joyful invitation to 
go up and see his long- lost Joseph in Egypt's 
imperial palace. His dark hour i3 just before 
the day. His trial proves his deliverance. God 
is better to him than his fear. What he baptized 
a "sorrow" has grown into a mercy too big for 
words. 

There are a hundred lessons to be learned 
from this brief passage about Jabez and his 
short-sighted mother ; it is a bough that if well 
shaken will rain down golden fruit. We learn 
from it not to be frightened by present fears, or 



io6 Little Sorrowful. 



cast down by present troubles. We learn from 
it that many of life's best things — yea ! the life 
of heaven-seeking piety itself begins in tears and 
griefs for sin, in oppositions and sharp-conflicts 
of the soul. We learn not to lose heart in labors 
of love for Christ and humanity, because the in- 
fant enterprise had to be "brought forth in sor- 
row" like the Hebrew mother's son. The very 
labors that cost us the most anxiety and self- 
denial and toil, often, like Jabez, "enlarge their 
borders" and grow into the most honorable and 
useful of all our undertakings. Never despair 
of a good work. Never despair of the cause of 
Right ; baptised with tears in its infancy, it has 
the life of God in its young veins. Never de- 
spair of a child. The one you weep the most 
for at the mercy-seat may fill your heart with 
the sweetest joys. Never despair of a soul. 
And never name either your children or your 
good enterprises "sorrowful" until you know 
how they are to turn out. and what an All-wise 
and All-merciful God means to do with them. 



Prayerless Prayers. 

PRAYER is one of the simplest things in the 
world, and yet one of the deepest of mys- 
teries. In its motive and in its method it 
is perfectly simple ; the talk of a child to its 
father could not be more so. In its prevailing 
power with Jehovah, and its unity with the great 
doctrine of his fixed decrees, it is to us a profound 
mystery. Such let it remain. It is not given 
to us to know all mysteries ; but it is permitted 
us, and it is commanded us. to " pray without 
ceasing." 

What is prayer ? Is it the rehearsal, on the 
bended knee, of a set form of solemn words, 
learned by rote from the Bible, from a liturgy, 
or from the traditions of the elders ? Many seem 
so to regard it. To them it is no higher, no 
deeper, no holier thing than that. Millions of 
so-called prayers have risen no loftier in charac- 



io8 Prayerless Prayers. 

ter or meaning ; and however devout or elegant 
in language, they cannot but be regarded as 
prayerless prayers ; for true prayer is an earn- 
est soul's direct converse with its God. Many 
other definitions might be given. This one an- 
swers our purpose now — the direct and earnest 
converse of a soul with God. By it, a poor, 
guilty soul confesses its sins ; by it, a needy 
soul makes known its wants ; through it, a de- 
vout, God-loving soul pours forth its adoration ; 
and by means of it, infinite blessings are brought 
down from heaven. The characteristics of the 
best prayer would be reverence, directness, sin- 
cerity, faith, and expectation of an answer 
through Jesus Christ. The lack of any one of 
these vitiates our petitions, and goes far toward 
making them prayerless. 

Let us offer a word or two on the characteris- 
tics of faith and directness of meaning. 

I. Faith is vital to every true prayer. It is 
the very child of a believing spirit. We must 
draw nigh to God, fully persuaded that we are 
asking for the right thing, that we are asking at 
the right place, that we are asking with the right 
spirit ; and there must we plead the promises 



Prayerless Prayers. 109 

again and again and again, till the windows of 
heaven open above our heads. Not only must we 
believe in God, but believe also in prayer ; not 
only that it is a good thing, but the only thing 
for our emergency. And when we have sought 
a longed-for object from our heavenly Father — 
using all the while our own best exertions too — 
then a truce to all worrying anxieties as to the 
result. Faith never worries. Selfishness does ; 
so does Unbelief. But he that trusts God, and 
uses all human agencies to secure the result he 
aims at, has no right to borrow trouble as to 
God's disposal of his petitions. When I have 
done the utmost that skill and patient love can 
do for my sick child, and when I have laid the 
darling in the arms of Christ with beseeching 
prayer, I have the assurance that he will answer 
me ; if not by restoring the dear sufferer to 
health, then by restoring my soul to a better 
spiritual health by taking her away from me. At 
any rate, my faith must be strong enough to be- 
lieve that God will so answer me as to please 
himself and to profit my own soul, or else I have 
but offered a poor apology for prayer. True 
faith takes God at his word. True faith reckons 
10 



no Prayerless Prayers. 

on answers to prayer as a fixed object of expec- 
tation, just as surely as the seed-scattering hus- 
bandman reckons on the May rains and the July 
sunshine. Have you done your own utmost, my 
brother ? Have you prayed your utmost ? Then 
bid adieu to anxiety. Sit down, and eat your 
bread in peace. Lay your head at night on your 
pillow, and go to sleep as a tired child Mis asleep 
on the breast that heaves in the undulations of 
love. You have ho business to put one wrinkle 
in your brow, or one thorn under your pillow. 
Wait on God. Keep waiting. Don't be uneasy. 
You will find your answer coming all in good 
time ; and God's time is always the best time. 
" Faith," as the great Dr. Mason used to say, in 
his broad Scotch style, " is joost the delightful 
recoombency of the soul on the bosom of the Re- 
deemer." 

II. Is this the way you pray ? Or is your 
uttered liturgy at the throne of grace a faithless 
mummery of words, not merely with no expecta- 
tion of an answer, but really without anything to 
be answered ? This is possible. I fear that more 
than half the smoothly-worded " addresses at the 
mercy seat" (that is the very word for them — 



Prayerless Prayers. in 

addresses) have no definite object, no aim, no 
purpose. They embody no felt want ; they ex- 
press no genuine desire. However elegant, how- 
ever scriptural in phraseology, however orthodox, 
they are really prayerless prayers. 

To test ourselves as to this point of directness 
of meaning, let us habitually ask our hearts, 
when we arise from our knees, " What have we 
been asking for? anything? Was there any 
clearly understood desire in our mind which we 
took to the throne of grace, and laid there ?" For 
what is a petition but the asking for some appre- 
ciated, desired, and needed thing? In all our 
intercourse with our fellow-men we never prac- 
tice the preposterous farce that we so often play 
off upon God. When we enter a neighbor's house 
to borrow a certain article, we have no difficulty 
in making our neighbor comprehend just what 
we are after. The merchant does not enter the 
bank until he has a definite idea of the amount 
he wishes to raise upon his note, and he makes 
the officers understand the precise sum he re- 
quires. If our child is dying, we know just 
where to go for a physician — just what to tell 
him ; and we do not leave him until we ascertain 



112 Prayerless Prayers. 

whether he is coming. Here is precision, and 
also pertinacity of purpose. Faith in the physi- 
cian and his remedies sends us to his house ; and 
our directness of purpose leaves him in no doubt 
as to our errand. Now. in every rightly-con- 
ceived and rightly-presented petition to the heav- 
enly King there will be the same confidence to lead 
us to his presence, and the same definite utterance 
of the heart's desire when we have come there. 

If prayer only liad a clearly defined, deeply 
felt object to plead for. it never would be a dull 
drudgery or a painful penance. We would say 
to ourselves. " How shall we best bring our bur- 
den of desire before our heavenly Father ?" Oh 
that we knew what argument to plead with him ! 
Oh that we might come near enough to touch the 
hem of Christ's garment ! then would we entreat 
him to make intercession for us at the court of 
heaven; then would we pray as sick Hezekiah 
prayed for health, as blind Bar ti mens cried out 
for recovery of sight, as the heart- wrung Jairus 
besought Christ's interposition for his dying 
daughter, as the conscience-smitten publican beg- 
ged for mercy to him. a sinner. And there are 
two or three things we would not do. We would 



Prayerless Prayers. 113 

not so often be guilty of solemn falsehoods told 
in pious language to the truth-loving God. We 
should not so often starve our souls, or insult our 
heavenly Father. We should not so often be 
guilty of uttering — what we have all uttered quite 
too often already — the hollow mockery of prayer- 
less prayers. 

10* 



Christ the Open Hospice. 

THE Hospice on the Alpine Mountain of St. 
Bernard, is a beautiful emblem of Christ 
as a refuge for sinners. Let us briefly 
point out some of the coincidences, and hope that 
among our readers may be some awakened pen- 
itent who feels his need of a Saviour. 

I. The Hospice is ample for all the weary and 
cold-struck travellers who knock at its gates. 
So did Jesus " taste death for every man." The 
merits of His atonement are sufficient for a whole 
universe of sinners. It is world-wide in its effi- 
cacy as it is world-wide in its offer. And what 
was necessary in order to save a single sinner — a 
Paul or a John ISTewton — is all that is necessary 
to secure the salvation of a nation or a globe. 
How much would be required for the protection 
of one poor half-frozen traveller over the ice- 
fields of St. Bernard? Simply that he should 



Christ the Open Hospice. 115 

be roofed from the descending snow, and walled 
in from the surrounding cold— -that he should 
have food, and fire, and shelter. But when the 
thick walls have once been reared, and the broad 
roof has once been spread above them — when the 
cellar has once been stored full, and the blazing- 
fire once kindled on the huge hearth-stone, why 
may not hundreds come in and be saved from 
exposure and icy death ? The great thing to be 
done was to build the Hospice, and so large, too, 
and so well provided, that accommodation should 
be assured to every Alpine pilgrim who could 
ever sue for admission. 

So in the economy of grace, the great indis- 
pensable was to provide an atonement ample for 
a guilty race — to open a house of refuge so ca- 
pacious, so strong, so safe, that a world of sin- 
ners could be saved, as well as a single pauper 
child. This has been done. Christ's death has 
an infinite efilcacy. He satisfied the demands of 
the law, and purchased a ransom for every be- 
liever, and then invites every guilty perishing 
soul to become a believer. The Hospice does 
not save a solitary man who stubbornly stays 
outside ; neither does the atonement of Jesus 



n6 Christ the Open Hospice. 

avail for a single sinner who refuses to accept it 
and believe. Over the portals of the Asylum 
on Mount Calvary, the pierced hand has written, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise 
cast out. And yet there is room." 

II. But while there is abundant room for you, 
my awakened friend, there is no room for your 
self -righteousness. A sharp-eyed sentinel stands 
at the door. He holds in his hand the fixed bay- 
onet of this truth, u By the works of the law 
no man shall be justified." You cannot evade 
this sentry. He will not let you bring in that 
back-load of your own paltry trash. Cast it 
away. There is room for you as a sinner in 
Christ's Befuge, but not an inch for your worth- 
less wares of self-righteousness. 

Nor is there room for worldliness. If you 
come to Jesus with your head full of business 
and your heart full of lucre — if you wish 
merely to get out a "policy of insurance" for 
your soul against the hour of death, and then go 
back to your money-getting, you will find the 
door hedged up. The wary guard on duty at 
the gate will stop you with the challenge, Ye 



Christ the Open Hospice. 117 

cannot serve God and Mammon. There is 
cordial welcome for you, bat Christ will not 
consent to share your heart with his own bitter 
enemy. 

III. There are many contraband articles to 
which no admission will be allowed at the door of 
Gospel-love. No man will be permitted to smug- 
gle in the implements of any illicit trade, or sin- 
ful practices. The flagons of strong drink — 
the cards and dice-box of the gamester — the 
passion-kindling literature of lust — the volumes 
of infidel lore ; yea, even the beads and tapers 
of self-saving superstition, are all excluded. 
Nor will it fare any better with you if you are 
smuggling in a concealed enmity towards a fellow- 
man in your heart ; or a darling appetite ; or a 
favorite sin. Of all these must you make a 
"clean breast" when you knock at that door over 
which is written, Whosoever will, let him come. 
If you have ever wronged a fellow-man in any 
business- transaction, you had better make honest 
restitution, before you apply again, in prayer, for 
admission to the priceless blessings of salvation. 
Many an awakened sinner has failed to find 
peace, simply because he was cherishing in his 



li8 Christ the Open Hospice. 

heart a wicked grudge, or was 'withholding an 
honest due from some one he had wronged. 

IV. While there is no room for your sins or 
self-righteousness, you will find ample room for 
all your talents, all your wealth, all your ac- 
tivities. If success in business has filled your 
purse, Christ will demand to share it with you. 
A large portion of your time he will levy on ; 
and all your influence. Within the Church of 
Jesus there is ample scope for the most colossal 
reason — for the most brilliant imagination — for 
the most fertile invention — for the most soul- 
cleaving eloquence. Come in. my friend : Christ 
hath need of thee ; but yet not so much as thy 
guilty, wayward, condemned soul hath need of 
HIM. 

V. We write this brief hurried paragraph for 
the benefit of some disheartening inquirer. Per- 
haps you have not yet found entrance into Christ's 
House of Salvation, because you have been too 
intensely selfish in your search. You have cared 
for no one but yourself. Try now to do some 
good to other souls, and see if it will not bring 
blessings to your own. 

You remember, perhaps, the incident — on the 



Christ the Open Hospice. 119 

St. Bernard mountain — of the freezing traveller 
who "was just settling down into the snow-drifts, 
despairing and half dead. The whirling snow- 
flurries were fast weaving the white shroud 
around his dying form. Just as he is about sink- 
ing into the numb insensibility, he hears the dis- 
tant cry of another traveller who, like himself, 
is perishing in the storm. He rouses up. He 
makes a sturdy effort to reach his companion in 
suffering — finds him — chafes him — lifts him on 
his feet, and supports his trembling steps onward 
towards the welcome light of the Hospice that 
now glimmers through the driving snow. The 
effort warms his own freezing frame into life 
again, and in trying to save another, he saves 
himself. Join hands with some friend who is 
yet out of Christ, and together struggle on 
towards the blessed " covert from the tempest.'' 
There is room for you both in the heart of 
Christ, in the atonement of Christ, in the 
Church of Christ, and in that everlasting rest 
which his blood has purchased for you. Re- 
member this — that no man perishes for want 
of an atonement. 



Motley and his Monument. 



THIRTY years ago, a handsome boy — famous 
among his classmates for his poetical quo- 
tations, and his Byronic shirt-collar— grad- 
uated at Harvard University. He was only sev- 
enteen. Coming from an aristocratic family of 
old Dorchester, it was not predicted of him that 
he ever would rise beyond the elegant literateur 
■ — scribbling a few dashing magazine articles, or 
perhaps a circulating-library novel. The articles 
were in time forthcoming, and appeared in the 
New York Revieiv and the ancient North 
American. The novels, too, appeared — a brace 
of them — and after a very brief career, were 
gathered to the silent dead, and slept among the 
poems of the " Milford Bard" and the speeches 
of Counsellor Phillips. It was easy to predict 
flashing review articles and romances ; but no one 
suspected that in the handsome John Motley lay 



Motley and his Monument, 121 

the " terrible toiler," who would yet immortalize 
his name in seven magnificent volumes of the 
History of the Netherlands. Five of these vol- 
umes lie before us, as we write on this bright 
spring morning ; the other two are on their tri- 
umphal march towards us. When the great work 
is complete, it will stand as the noblest monu- 
ment of historical genius since Prescott was laid 
in Mount Auburn, and Lord Macaulay was laid 
in Westminster Abbey. 

In comparing the last instalment of Mr. Mot- 
ley's history with the previous volumes, we are 
struck with their superior originality and depth 
of research. The salient incidents in the "Rise 
of the Dutch Republic" — the horrible blood- 
hound raid of Alva through the Low Countries — 
the romance of Count Egmont — the thrilling 
siege of Leyden — the solemn grandeur of Silent 
William's career of patriotism and patience, which 
no one has ever painted indeed like Motley — the 
final catastrophe of that career, were all more or 
less familiar to every well-read student of his- 
tory. But the new volumes are literally new. 
They put a window into the secret history of that 
eventful age. We stand quietly by, and look 
11 



122 Motley and his Monument. 

into the very 'penetralia of Queen Elizabeth's 
Cabinet — nay, into that proud woman's selfish 
soul. And after the sharp scrutiny, we are com- 
pelled to confess that she is not as great a Queen 
Bess, nor as " good a Queen Bess," as we had 
once been taught to believe her. We also get 
wonderful glimpses into the interior life of the 
young Dutch Republic ; and after a thorough 
study of such men as modest Maurice Nassau, 
sagacious Olden Barneveld, and sharp-witted Paul 
Buys, we own to a prodigious liking for them all. 
We even fancy the slashing, dashing freebooter 
Martin Schenk ; and half wish that he were alive 
again, in order to reenforce Fort Sumter, under 
the very nose of General Quattlebum. But the 
rarest revelation of Motley's book is that of the 
ghostly chamber of the Palace of the Escurial, 
where sits, day and night, the old Popish spider, 
spinning his everlasting net of tyranny, and in- 
trigue, and hellish hate — the hardest, coldest, 
most infernal picture of a "spiritual wickedness 
in high places" that modern history has furnish- 
ed. Philip of Spain is to Motley what the second 
King James is to Macaulay. He delights to 
paint the gloomy Spanish tyrant so black, that 



Motley and his Monument 123 

ordinary human blackness shows almost white on 
the hideous background. A good service to our 
race has the Dutch historian rendered, by gibbet- 
ing the career of Philip, for the study and the de- 
testation of all coming times ; nor from that gib- 
bet of deserved infamy will any future chronicler 
find it easy to take the loathsome carrion down. 
The world will love to draw the comparison be- 
tween Protestant William of Nassau, and Philip, 
the foster-child of Rome and the Inquisition. 

The labor which these two latest volumes must 
have cost the " handsome youth" of Dorchester, 
is beyond the conception of those who knew him 
in his sophomoric days. Reams of dispatches 
had to be overhauled. Tons of dusty volumes 
ransacked. Whole boxes of chaff had to be win- 
nowed, in order to come at a few precious grains 
of truth. Several months were spent in the sin- 
gle task of reading the vast secret correspondence 
of Spain and its proconsuls, from the " Archives 
of Simancas." As we sit comfortably on our 
lounge, and fallow the thrilling narrative of Span- 
ish prowess, and of indomitable Dutch bravery — 
as we watch the siege of Antwerp, or listen to 
wordy debates in Queen Elizabeth's council- 



124 Motley and his Monument. 

chamber, or gaze at the inglorious rout of the In- 
vincible Armada — we can have but little idea of 
the wear j years of study with which Mr. Motley 
has purchased for us our hour of intellectual lux- 
ury. It is like the pearl which beams on the 
brow of a bride. We admire the soft hue of the 
brilliant ; but we do not see the pearl-diver ven- 
turing his own life at the bottom of the sea, or 
lifted half dead into his boat, with the blood gush- 
ing from bis nostrils. Hard work is it, and slow, 
for a historian to build such a monument as this 
which Motley has reared to Dutch heroism and 
Protestant faith ; but when once built, it bears 
its builder's name to after generations, and will 
prove to be a " monumentum agre perennius." 

These volumes before us are not without their 
faults, which slightly mar the effect of their un- 
disputed splendor. The style is sometimes af- 
fected and overwrought. Occasionally it is sin- 
gularly careless ; and on a few occasions the 
mirthfulness of the satire is out of place. We do 
not think the style of the newer portion superior 
to the older ; and we heartily wish that Mr. Mot- 
ley had let alone all flings at the Genevan theol- 
ogy. Those gibes and jeers might better have 



Motley and his Monument. 125 

been left to sleep under the elms of Cam- 
bridge. 

No one can read these most masterly volumes 
without a temptation to throw them down at 
every few pages, in sheer indignation at the 
shameful political and military blunders which 
they so truthfully describe. The History of the 
United Netherlands is one of the most provoking 
of all histories. At one moment we are provoked 
at the obstinacy of Admiral Treslong — then at 
the rashness of Saint Aldegonde — then at the 
stupid folly of hard-drinking Count Hobenlo, for 
losing the town of Bois-le-Duc — then at the in- 
tolerable blunders of "unlucky Koppen Loppen." 
We lose all patience with Queen Elizabeth, for 
her stingy clutch of her pennies while her troops 
were starving among the fens of Holland. Her 
ill-timed parsimony, coupled with her cheap pro- 
fessions of sympathy, remind us of the windy ex- 
horter in the class-meeting, who boasted that his 
religion only cost him twenty-five cents a year ! 
" The Lord have mercy on your stingy soul I" 
exclaimed the indignant class-leader. "We get 
out of patience, too, with the foppish Liecester ; 

and feel indignant that such a curl-pate should 
11* 



126 Motley and his Monument. 



have represented Old England on the soil of Hol- 
land, in the days of Bacon. Sidney, and Shake- 
speare. We are annoyed with his whimpering 
love-makings, in the midst of the stern strife of 
liberty with despotism, and only despise him less 
than we do the fickle folly of his royal mistress. 
But much as this history provokes us, it all the 
more delights us as a glorious epic of Protestant 
heroism. It stirs . the Dutch blood in our veins. 
We feel proud of claiming descent from the men 
who stood around William the Silent, and from 
the heroes of Leyden, who fought the Spaniards 
without the city walls, and starvation within the 
walls, until they contested with the dogs for the 
bones and offal of the streets. x\s we lay down 
these records of godly patience and valor, we 
think of what Thomas Carlyle once said to us, in 
commenting on the pluck of the besieged citizens 
of Leyden. "The Dootch," said he, in his 
broad Scotch style, " are the brawvest people in 
the wurld. Men have roon after a red rag of a 
Frenchman ; but the defence of Dootch Protest- 
ants against Spain, is the grondest thing in his- 
tory. Ah ! when Phee-lip sent the Duke of 
Alva and his Popish cut-throats to do the beesi- 



Motley and his Monument. 127 

ness for Holland, those Dootchmen^ws^ squelched 
him as ye wad squelch a rotten egg ! Ye may 
depend, that there was niver a brawver thing 
than thot in all moodern times !" To all which, 
we — sitting under our catalpa this morning, with 
these splendid pages of Motley before us — do 
most cordially respond, Amen ! 



The 
Flaw in the Wedding Link. 

THE wedding was a pleasant one, and full of 
promise. The bride was as clearly formed 
for "attractive grace" as Milton's Eve. 
Her bright face glowed with the white and red 
which " Nature's own sweet and cunning hand 
laid on." The man at her side was every inch 
a man ; and his face flushed with honest pride 
when her softly spoken "Yes, I do" fell upon 
his ear. The link, that day welded before God 
with prayer, seemed so bright, and firm, and 
strong, that no eye could detect a flaw. 

A few weeks after, when the bridal tour was 
over, we saw them at church, side by side. A 
good beginning, thought we. It was the Sab- 
bath for celebrating the Lord's Supper. When 
the time came for distributing the bread and 
wine, the non-professors either changed their 



The Flaw in the Wedding Link. 129 

seats or left the church ; not all, but many of 
them. The young bridegroom rose reluctantly, 
halted a moment, then took his hat and went 
over to a side pew, and sat by himself. The 
bride was left to commemorate the love of her 
Saviour alone. It was their first separation, and 
in a moment a " great gulf" seemed to open be- 
tween them ! Ah, thought we to ourself, there 
is a flaw in that wedding link already ; they are 
one toward each other, but toward God they are 
two ! How can two walk together toward eter- 
nity when they are going in opposite directions ? 
Which of them will draw the strongest? If 
God gives them a household to rear up, which 
will the children follow soonest, the praying 
mother or the irreligious father ? Will it not be 
a house divided against itself? 

Looking around the church, we saw other 
separations just as wide and melancholy as this 
one. Husbands and wives were there that day 
who, during the previous week, had dwelt lov- 
ingly together. They had sat at the same table 
at home ; they had wept and rejoiced together in 
the sorrows and the joys of one common fireside. 
But at the table of their divine Lord and Re- 



130 The Flaw in the Wedding Link. 

deemer they parted. To human eyes, but a 
narrow church aisle divided them, yet in God's 
sight, they were spiritually as wide asunder as 
the poles. Looking at this scene of separation, 
the question came up to our mind, " In the great 
day, when Christ the Judge shall separate souls, 
as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats, 
will the wedding tie hold then? Or will there 
be found a fatal flaw in the link that will leave 
husband and wife to break asunder with a part- 
ing that shall never again be followed by a 
meeting?" 

To many a loving wife who will read these lines 
this a sore and tender subject. What shall I do 
to save my husband's soul ? has been the burden 
of her own soul for more than one anxious year. 
We would reply to such as she, You can pray 
for him, But to make your prayer of any avail, 
be careful not to contradict it by your life. Do 
not ask God to direct him to the Saviour, and 
then yourself stand in his way. You can do 
more than pray for him ; you can draw him. 
By driving, you cannot move him one inch 
heavenward. You cannot force him to the 
church, to a prayer meeting, to his Bible, or to 



The Flaw in the Wedding Link. 131 

the Saviour. But if, in the name of Jesus, you 
fasten the silken hawsers of affection to him, and 
apply the persuasions of earnest lips, still more 
of a holy, sweet-tempered, noble life, you may 
be delightfully surprised to see how he will " go 
after you." As the huge man-of-war, on its 
way down out of the harbor, seems to say to the 
little steam-tug, " draw ?ne, and I will go along 
with you," so has many a resolute will and 
carnal heart been won along steadily toward 
Christ, by the gentle power of a sweet, prayer- 
ful woman's life. The positive efforts that you 
make for your husband's conversion must be 
made wisely. There is a sort of holy tact in 
this business. Watch your opportunities. Do 
not approach him with it when he is out of tem- 
per. Do not worry him with teasing talk, or 
with taunts ; do not assume the tone of pity, — 
it will only irritate. Watch your chances and 
aim to cooperate with the Spirit of God when 
you see the heart moved by the truth, or moved 
by affliction, or by any event of Providence ; 
then work with the Holy Spirit. 

One good illustration is often worth a hundred 
counsels. And an actual incident we have some- 



132 The Flaw in the Wedding Link. 

-where met with fits our case exactly. During a 
period of general religious interest in the city of 

B , a wife of devoted piety persuaded her 

husband to go with her one evening to her 
church. He tried to think himself an infidel, 
and made sport of religion on every opportunity. 
" I will never go again," said he, angrily, to her. 
" I was provoked and insulted ; that sermon 
against infidelity was aimed at me." She saw 
that the shots were striking, and said nothing. 
But prayer was made for him, without ceasing, 
by herself and a few friends. 

One evening the wife kindly said to him, 
"Dear, will you grant me one little request? — 
go with me to-night to meeting." "I will go to 
the door, and no further." With true womanly 
tact she says, " Very well, that will do." He 
goes with her, parts from her at the door, stays 
out in the cold, while she goes in, and breaks into 
fervent prayer for him as soon as she reaches her 
seat. She is trying not only the strength of her 
marriage link, but of that mightier link that 
binds her faith to the God of Promise. 

Presently the door slowly opens ; a man walks 
straight to her seat, and sits down beside her ! 



The Flaw in the Wedding Link. 133 

He listens ; goes home quietly • she, meanwhile, 
talking more with God than with her husband. 
The next evening, after tea, as they sit chatting 
by the fire, he rises, and with some emotion says, 
"Wife, isn't it most time to go to church?" 
She springs from her chair; it is entirely too 
early, but she will not risk delay ; and hurrying 
on hat and cloak, they are off. A happy evening 
was that to her yearning, loving heart ! For 
his stubborn soul melts down under the truth like 
wax in the flame ; his infidelity is conquered 
where it only can be vanquished — at the cross of 
Christ ! 

From that evening he is a new man. His 
home is a new place. There is an altar at his 
fireside. Behold, he prayeth ! And ever after, 
through their happy lives, there was no flaw in 
the link that bound them in their daily walk 
toward heaven. "What knowest thou, wife, 
whether thou shalt save thy husband?" 
12 



Do All for Christ. 

THE celebrated Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, 
kept a portrait of Henry Martyn hanging 
over his fireplace. It was always in sight. 
Looking up at it, he used to say, " There ; see 
that blessed man ! What an expression of coun- 
tenance ! No one looks at me as he does. He 
seems always to be saying, ' Be serious ; be in 
earnest; don't trifle.'" Then, smiling and 
bowing toward the sweet, thoughtful face, Simeon 
would add, " And I won't — I won't trifle." 

So, fellow-Christian, there is hung up, by the 
divine Spirit, a picture before our eyes. It is 
the heavenly countenance of our blessed Saviour. 
The traces of the sorrow in the garden, of the 
agony on the cross, are yet written on that vis- 
age, "marred more than any of the sons of men." 
The serenest patience sits on that face, and it 
yearns with a love stronger than death. Holi- 



Do All for Chrift. 135 

ness dwells there, which cannot look upon sin 
save with abhorrence. 

And that face of Jesus seems ever to be say- 
ing to us, " Live for me. Whatever ye do, do it 
unto me." When we sit alone and dejected, the 
countenance comes up near to us, and says, ' ' Let 
not your heart be troubled. Lo, I am w r ith you 
always." When we are tempted to sin, the face 
rebukes us w 7 ith the words, " Wound me not in 
the house of my friends." And when we have 
come back, ashamed and disgraced from a cow- 
ardly desertion of his cause in the hour of trial, 
oh, how that look upbraids us, as he seems to say, 
"Could ye not watch with me one hour?" 
Sometimes a poor, needy servant of God comes 
to us for a word or deed of sympathy, or for a 
gift to his necessities. Selfishness begins to mut- 
ter about "interruptions," and the " many calls," 
and the "no end to cases of charity." But the 
down-looking Jesus says, "Do it unto me. He 
is one of my poor children : give him for my 
sake." There is not a struggling church that 
knocks at our heart, or a hungry beggar that 
knocks at our door, for relief; there is not a lone 
widow who asks a pittance to warm her shiver- 



136 Do All for Chrift. 

ing frame, or a neglected child running in rags 
and recklessness through the broken Sabbath, 
but ever the same voice says to us, " Help them 
for my sake ; inasmuch as ye do it unto one of 
the least of these, ye do it unto me." 

An incident in John Falk's German Charity 
School illustrates this idea beautifully. When 
one of the boys at table had said the pious grace, 
" Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest and bless the 
food thou hast provided," a little fellow looked 
up and said, " Do tell me why the Lord Jesus 
never comes!" "Dear child, only believe, and 
you may be sure he will come, for he always 
hears our invitations." "I shall set a chair for 
him, then," said the little fellow; and he did so. 
Presently there was a knock at the door. A 
poor, frozen apprentice entered, begging a night's 
lodging. He was made welcome to the empty 
seat the boy had set. The little fellow was 
thinking hard for some time. "Ah," chirped 
he, "Jesus could not come to-night, and so he 
sent this poor man in his place; is that it?" 
" Yes, child, that is just it. Every cup of wa- 
ter or piece of bread that we give to the poor or 
hungry, for Jesus 1 sake, we give to him ; inas- 



Do All for Chrift. 137 

much as ye do it to one of the least of these, my 
brethren, ye do it unto Christ." 

What a sacredness this imparts to every work 
of Christian love ! What a glory it throws 
around the humblest object of Christian charity ! 
And then, too, what a stupendous crime against 
Christ is any wrong done to those in whom he 
dwells, and whom he makes his representatives ! 
Methinks, when I hear of the patient, God-fear- 
ing drudge of the plantation, beaten with many 
stripes, I am ready to say, "Ye are scourging 
the blessed Jesus in the person of his poor, help- 
less child." When I read of a pious slave girl 
profaned to the vilest uses of lechery to gratify 
the lust of her profligate owner, I am ready to 
cry out, " Ye are outraging Christ, who redeemed 
that helpless victim of your lust, and who will 
visit her wrongs upon your guilty head. Know 
ye not that the body of one of his disciples, how- 
ever lowly, is the habitation of God through the 
Spirit? Inasmuch as ye do this abominable 
thing, ye do it unto Christ." 

When the poet Wbittier read the narrative of 

a sale of human beings in New Orleans, and that 

the auctioneer had recommended a fair-complex- 
12* 



138 Do All for Chrift. 

ioned bondwoman on the stand as a ' ; good Chris- 
tian," the indignant Quaker exclaims : 

" A Christian ! going — gone ! 
Who bids for God's own image ? for his grace, 
Which this poor victim of the market-place 
Hath in her suffering won ? 

" My God 1 can such things be ? 
Hast thou not said, that whatsoe'er is done 
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one, 
Is even done to thee ? 

u In that sad victim, then, 
Saviour of pitying love, I see thee stand 
Once more the jest word of a mocking band — 
Bound, sold, and scourged again !" 

The poet was right. Christ's own words war- 
ranted his righteous outburst of indignation. 
Jesus and his members are one. A cup of cold 
water given to them in his name, fails not of its 
reward. A wrong done to them is an insult to 
the Lord of glory. 

In the light of this truth we are contemplating, 
the work of every pastor, every Sunday-school 
teacher, and every philanthropist, catches a new 
beauty and lustre. As I sit in this study, this 
morning, I seem to see a face of divine loveliness 
looking down on me from the walls, and saying, 



Do All for Chrift. 139 

" Write all these truths for me. Feed my lambs. 
Save those souls committed to thee bj mj gospel 
and for mj glory." As the Sabbath- school 
teacher lays down this paper and hurries off to 
his class, he will meet the blessed Saviour beside 
his seat, and hear him say, " Whatsoever ye do 
for the least of these immortal souls, ye do for 
me." 

Yea, more. When a Christian leaves the sanc- 
tuary or the communion-table, and goes to his 
counting-room, shall he be less a Christian there 
than he was in the house of God, or at the fami- 
ly altar ? No : for there is an invisible Saviour 
beside him theje, saying, " ' Provide things hon- 
est in the sight of all men ;' ' let not your good 
be evil spoken of:' you are my representative." 

Do Christian men of business always remem- 
ber this ? Do they always so keep their ledgers 
that they would be willing to have their Master 
audit the accounts ? When a church-member 
wrings out the last clime from an unfortunate 
debtor, does he do it for Christ ? When he rents 
his property for dram-shops, or brothels, or 
haunts of vice ; when he drives a sharp bargain 
with misfortune or inexperience, does he do it for 



140 Do All for Chrift. 

the honor or for the shame of his Sabbath pro- 
fessions? Ah, my friends, it is not only from 
the study walls of pastors, but from the walls of 
every shop, every counting-room, and every hall 
of justice and legislation, that the countenance of 
the all-holy Jesus is looking down, and saying, 
u Do all for me." 

Whether ye eat or drink ; whether ye buy or 
sell ; whether ye labor or pray ; whether ye re- 
joice or suffer, do all for my glory ! 



<^£^^^d* 



Answering our own Prayers, 



^ 



TE use this expression, not too literally, but 
simply for want of a better one. The 
idea we aim at is, that every Christian 
is bound to do his utmost for the fulfilment of his 
own prayers. He is never to ask God to give 
what he is not trying his utmost to obtain ; he is 
never to ask God to make him what he is not 
faithfully trying to become. 

This is our idea. It is partially illustrated by 
the familiar fable of Hercules and the wagoner. 
When the overloaded wagon sunk into the mire, 
instead of laboring to pry out the imbedded 
vehicle, the wagoner fell to praying Hercules to 
interpose his brawny arm for his relief. The god 
of muscle thus appealed to, reminded the luckless 
teamster that, while he prayed for help, he had 
better put his own shoulder to the wheel, and 
help himself. 



142 Answering our own Prayers. 

In one sense this heathen fable illustrates the 
true relation between the sovereign God and the 
child of prayer. On our side is complete depen- 
dence. On the side of Omnipotence is infinite 
mercy. From Him cometh down every good and 
every perfect gift. And because we are so de- 
pendent upon our heavenly Father, and owe him 
so much of submission, obedience, and trust, 
therefore are we to "pray without ceasing." 
But w T hile we pray we are to work : first, as a 
proof of the sincerity of our desires ; and next, 
in order to obey God, who commands us to be- 
come the very men that we ask him to make us 
by his grace. 

Does every child of God do his utmost to 
secure the answers to his own uttered requests ? 
Most empatically we reply, No ! "With even the 
best men there is a sad disparity between prayer 
and practice — between the askings of the lips and 
the actings of the heart — between their life and 
their liturgy. 

I. Take, for example, the oft-repeated prayer 
for growth in grace. This is a vital request, 
and the most formal Christian professor will utter 
it nearly every day of his life. If he would re- 



Answering our own Prayers. 143 

sist the continual gravitation of inward sin and 
surrounding worldliness, he must cry as contin- 
ually for heart-grace. But just imagine the 
owner of a vast field of weeds kneeling down 
among the " johnswort" and Canada thistles, and 
praying God to give him from that field a plenti- 
ful corn harvest ! Not a furrow has been turned. 
Not a kernel planted. But the insane husband- 
man implores from heaven a crop, toward the 
growing of which his sluggish fingers have not 
been lifted. My Christian brother, you never 
are guilty of such folly in the management of 
your secular interests. You never expect car- 
goes without sending ships seaward ; you never 
count on crops without ploughing, manuring and 
seeding your acres. No school-girl would ex- 
pect to see her pet flower grow in the conservatory 
without water and fresh earth. She sprinkles the 
azalea leaves until they drip, and feeds the deli- 
cate tuberose with new earth as often as its wast- 
ing leaves telegraph its hunger. God takes care 
of her plants : but she takes care of them too, 
and does not expect him to work miracles for the 
benefit of lazy people. Her prayer for her 
flowers is in the brimming pitcher and the virgin 



144 Answering our own Prayers. 

earth which her careful hands bring to the green- 
house. 

Carry this same principle into your religion. 
Do you pray with the lips for growth in holiness, 
growth in heavenly-mindedness, growth in spirit- 
ual stamina? Then to the work of cleansing 
the heart-field ! Then to the cutting up of the 
tares of covetousness — the Johns wort of pride — 
the nettles of selfishness — the briers of deceit — 
the overgrown burdocks of sloth — and the seed- 
scattering thistles of unbelief ! Pull them by 
the roots. Give your inward lusts no quarter. 
Keep no terms with them. Make no compro- 
mise with some darling sin to sprout and grow 
unobserved in some back corner of your soul- 
garden. Clear out every weed, in order that the 
seed-corn of godliness may have the full strength 
of the affections and the energies to make it grow. 
Watch over that precious seed. Water it with 
prayers and penitential tears. Strengthen it 
with Bible truth. And as you pray for the 
growth of heart-piety, let no indulged lust, no 
pet sin, harbored in secret places, prove your 
uttered prayer to be an abomination in the sight 
of the all-searching God. " If I regard iniquity 



Answering our own Prayers. 145 

in my heart" (that is, if I cling to it and cherish 
it) " God will not hear me." Nor will the Lord 
of holiness answer with a Yea what we are prac- 
tically answering with a Nay. 

II. Let us illustrate and apply this prin- 
ciple, in the next place, to parents who are pray- 
ing for the conversion of their children. No 
petition is more fitting than this ; none could be 
more acceptable to God. But what hope have 
you, my friend, for the renewal of your children's 
hearts, if you pray in one direction with the lips, 
and quite in the opposite direction with the life ? 
We see constantly the two antagonistic types of 
parental influence. Both are nominally Christian : 
only one is really such. The one man pleads at the 
altar for the sanctification of his household — that 
his sons may become sons of God, and his daugh- 
ters may be as polished stones in the temple of 
Christ. He makes religion prominent in his 
family ; it is visible, legible, and above board. 
The books that are brought home for the children 
to read, the newspapers that are taken, the 
amusements that are chosen, the society that is 
sought, the aims in life that are set before those 
children, all bear in one direction and in the right 



146 Answering our own Prayers. 

direction. God is not asked by that father to 
convert his offspring to godliness while he is 
doing his best to pervert them to sin and worldli- 
ness. Nor is God implored to convert them while 
the parent uses no agencies to affect the longed- 
for result. No more than the Lord would be 
asked to restore the sick boy from a typhus fever, 
and yet no physician called in and no medicine 
administered. How much worse if the father, 
having prayed that his child be restored, should 
fall to giving the poor boy strychnine or prussic 
acid in large doses ! 

Yet professed Christians do this very thing 
often in morals and religion. They pray for 
their children's recovery to holiness, and then 
poison them ! They pray for a son's purity, and 
then flash the wine-cup before his eyes. They 
pray for a daughter's conversion, with a theatre- 
ticket in their pockets — a " family ticket" for 
the whole household ! They go to church, look 
devout, and then come home to trifle, to gossip — 
to entertain Sunday visitors at a sumptuous feast, 
to talk politics, to do anything, in short, but fol- 
low up the teachings of God's minister with affec- 
tionate, faithful home instructions. The practi- 



Answering our own Prayers. 147 

cal effect of their whole conduct and conversa- 
tion, both on the Lord's day and all the days of 
the week, is to undo whatever good may have 
been done by the earnest labors of the pulpit. 
What must such children think of those fluent 
prayers that they hear every night at the family 
altar ? What of the consistency of those parents 
who utter such solemn mockeries ? Oh ! it is 
better never to pray at all for the conversion of 
your offspring than to ask God, in solemn tones, 
to save them, while you are using your whole 
influence to harden and destroy them. " Out of 
thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou unfaith- 
ful servant." 

In eternity it will be a terrible thing for many 
a man to meet his own prayers. Their very lan- 
guage will condemn him ; for he knew his duty 
but he did it not. Those fervent prayers, which 
the good man labored to make effectual, will be 
" shining ones" in white raiment to conduct their 
author in to the banque ting-house of the Great 
King. But the falsehoods uttered at the throne 
of grace will live again as tormenting scorpions 
in the day of the Lord's appearing. "Be not 
rash with thy mouth, nor let thy heart be hasty 



148 Answering our own Prayers. 

to utter anything before God," is an injunction 
that forbids more than irreverence in prayer. 
It forbids us, by implication, to ask for that 
which we do not sincerely desire. Above all, it 
forbids the asking from God those blessings which 
we are hindering by our neglect, or thwarting by 
our selfishness and unbelief. 



Our Stumbling Brother. 

AN aged man — the noblest man then living 
on our globe — once sat down and wrote, 
under the inspiration of God, these words : 
"It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink 
wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stum- 
bleth." Now, who is our "brother?" In this 
passage Paul may have referred to his brother in 
Christian fellowship ; he was to do nothing wil- 
fully offensive and injurious to his fellow- disciple 
in God's household. But if he is to be thus 
tender of the feelings and watchful of the in- 
terests of other Christians, how much more ought- 
he to avoid anything which would be morally hurt- 
ful to the impenitent masses of his fellow- men ! 
Let us look at the teaching of this famous 
passage, so redolent of Christian philanthropy. 

What does the passage teach ? To our mind it 
13* 



150 Our Stumbling Brother. 

clearly teaches the moral obligation to abstain 
from practices and usages that inevitably injure 
others. We are to abstain from that which 
works mischief to our brother-man, and we are 
to do so from the laic of love. This is the drift 
of the passage, and of the whole chapter in 
which it is imbedded. Even so conservative an 
expounder as Professor Hodge of Princeton says, 
(in treating of this passage,) that things not sin- 
ful in themselves are to be given up for the 
sake of others. The legal liberty of a conscien- 
tious man, is never to be exercised where a moral 
evil will inevitably flow from such exercise. If 
my " liberty" puts a stumbling-block in the way 
of another, and trips him so that he falls, then 
woe unto me for persisting in using this liberty. 
The principle is a broad one, and it is as noble as 
that Gospel of love that gave it birth. It is the 
principle that good men are to sacrifice every- 
thing and anything that is destructive to the best 
interests of humanity. 

We lay down then, this proposition, that no 
man of conscience has a moral right to abet any 
system or practice which is known to be inevi- 
tably hurtful to his neighbor man. I have a 



Our Stumbling Brother 151 

legal right to do many things which, as a man of 
principle, I ought not to do. I have a legal 
right to take opium or arsenic, or swallow vast 
quantities of fourth-proof brandies ; but I have no 
moral right thus to commit self-destruction. I 
have a legal right to attend habitually a theatre, 
even though every play there enacted should be 
surcharged with moral poison, and every tier 
were thronged with harlots. There is no written 
law to forbid my going there, and no officer 
stands guard to repel me. But I have no moral 
right to go there — not merely because I shall see 
and hear what is ensnaring and polluting to my- 
self, but because that whole garnished and glit- 
tering establishment, with its sensuous attrac- 
tions, is to many of my fellow-men a chandeliered 
and crimsoned hell; a yawning maelstrom of 
perdition. The dollar I give at the entrance, is 
my direct contribution toward sustaining an es- 
tablishment whose dark foundations rest on the 
murdered souls of hundreds of my fellow-men. 
What right have I to contribute my money and 
to give the sanction of my example to the sup- 
port of a perfect slaughter-house of character 
and of immortal souls ? 



152 Our Stumbling Brother. 

Now on this same principle — not merely of 
seZ/'-preservation, for of that I am not now speak- 
ing — what right have I to sustain the magazines 
of moral death where poisonous drinks are vended? 
What right have I to sustain a traffic which is 
simply dealing out death by measure ? What 
right have I to abet the drinking usages of 
society ? If a glass of intoxicating drink on my 
table (be it sparkling Madeira or Bourbon 
whisky) will entrap some one of susceptible or 
excitable temperament into dissipation, what right 
have I to set that trap for his life, to tempt him 
to his own ruin, and make myself the particeps 
criminis in his destruction ? If the contents of 
the glass which I give my brother cause him to 
stumble, he stumbles over me. If his moral re- 
straints are broken, I helped to break them. I 
am an accomplice in his sin. If he goes away 
from my table with an increased thirst for the 
bottle, I have helped to make him a drunkard ; 
and, to that degree, have helped to shut him 
out of heaven. The words he may have spoken, 
the blows he may have struck, the excesses he 
may have committed under the stimulation of my 
offered glass, are, to a certain degree, my words 



Our Stumbling Brother. 153 

and deeds of folly and of wickedness. But for 
me he would not have uttered the words or done 
the shameful deeds. The man who (in the lan- 
guage of Scripture) "puts the bottle to his 
neighbor," is partially and largely responsible 
for all the havoc which that bottle makes, and 
for the dark damnation which may follow in its 
train. Of course, this principle makes fearful 
work with the wilful traffic in intoxicating drinks 
as a beverage ; and when society punishes the 
drunkard for his outrages, and licenses the 
drunkard-maker, it simply punishes the effect 
and protects the cause ! 

We might say a thousand things here on the 
woes of the drunkard, on the guilt of the dram- 
seller, on the poisonous nature of the most pop- 
ular alcoholic drinks, and on the frightful havoc 
which the bottle is working in the army, in our 
households, and even in our churches. But we 
prefer now to speak on one specific point, viz., 
the duty of all conscientious people to abstain 
from drinking and offering strong drink, while 
that drink makes others '-stumble." It is the 
stumblers that we are now pleading for. It is 
for those whom your wine-cup — offered in mis- 



1^4 Our Stumbling Brother. 

taken hospitality, or under the' tyranny of fashion 
— may precipitate into drunkenness and per- 
dition. Oh ! those stumblers ! Who are they ? 
I hardly dare tell ; for it would touch many of 
us too tenderly. It would tear open too many 
secret wounds which pride and affection are at- 
tempting, but in vain, to conceal. It would re- 
veal ivrecks that angels might weep over. It 
would open afresh some tombs where the char- 
itable green turf now hides out of sight what 
surviving friendship would love to have forgotten. 
For the sake of my stumbling brother, I am 
bidden to abstain. Is this asking too much of 
me ? Let a single incident answer. In a certain 
convention of temperance philanthropists, a cler- 
gyman made a plausible defense of the moral 
right of even good men to drink and to offer 
alcoholic liquors. Teetotalism he denounced as 
fanatical and unscriptural. He talked glibly 
about the wine used at Cana of Galilee, (though 
not very understandingly.) and insisted that 
for one he should claim the right to use liquors 
at his own table and in social gatherings. When 
he had concluded his sophistical argument, an old 
man arose under much emotion. His voice 



Our Stumbling Brother. 155 

trembled with grief. Turning to the convention, 
he said in substance to them, "I know a young 
man. He is fast becoming an inebriate. I fear 
he is ruined. When he is urged to give up the 
wine-cup, he always pleads the example of a cer- 
tain popular clergyman. He says that while 
that minister takes his glass and defends it, he 
means to do the same. Gentlemen ! that poor in- 
temperate youth is my son ; and the clergyman 
whose evil example he is following is the very 
same one who has just addressed this conven- 
tion!" 



A Christian's Right Place. 

IN a well- organized army every man has his 
place. The mathematical head goes to the 
engineer corps. The medical skill and 
steady hand are assigned to the surgical depart- 
ment. The sharp-eyed man shall handle the 
Enfield rifle ; and the well-taught graduate of a 
half-dozen hard-fought fields, receives the sword 
of a brigadier. He who has the most of Napo- 
leon in him soon fights his way to the supreme 
command. A Wellington or a Scott would not 
be more out of place in the ranks than would a 
Paul or an Apollos be in spending their precious 
time in teaching the children of a mission school 
to read the alphabet. " Every man in his place," 
is as much the motto of the Church as it is of 
the camp ; the wrong place is well-nigh as fatal 
as no place at all. 



A Chriilian's Right Place. 157 

Now what is a Christian's right place ? Man- 
ifestly it is the place that his Creator made him 
for and trained him for. To mistake it is a mis- 
fortune ; to desert it is a disgrace and a crime. 
The Bible answer to our question is given in 
these words : " Having then gifts differing ac- 
cording to the grace that is given us, whether 
prophecy, let us prophesy according to the pro- 
portion of faith ; or ministry, let us wait on our 
ministering ; or he that teacheth, on teaching ; 
or he that exhorteth, on exhortation ; he that 
giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that 
ruleth, with diligence ; he that showeth mercy, 
with cheerfulness." The principle here laid 
down is, that every true Christian, after a can- 
did, honest inspection of his own physical and 
mental and moral qualifications, should take the 
post of duty or the line of labor for which his 
gifts best fit him. But no man — no ! not one, 
is to " neglect the gift that is in " him. 

Some men were manifestly created for the pul- 
pit. God gave them clear heads, warm hearts, 
and strong lungs, a love of Jesus and a love 
of saving souls. To possess these is to have 
a divine call for the ministry ; for such to stay 
14 



158 A Chriftian's Right Place. 

out of the pulpit (if strong inclination draw 
them thitherward) is as grievous a mistake as it 
has been for hundreds of others to enter the 
pulpit. 

But because a man is not called to preach Je- 
sus in the sacred desk, must he preach nowhere 
else ? Is all the earnestness, and all the persua- 
sive power, and all the hunger for souls, which a 
pious lawyer or a pious mechanic may possess, to 
run to waste ? No" ! Let him tell his neighbor 
of the great salvation wherever he can find him — 
whether in the public meeting for conference, in 
the prayer- circle, by the wayside or the fireside, 
in the sick-room, or in whatever place God brings 
a soul within his reach. And how successfully 
this work may be done, let such men as Harlan 
Page, and Robert Haldane, and Cranfield, and 
the good Methodist Carvosso, answer. God is 
opening a wide door for lay exhortation in our 
time. Brownlow North, in Great Britain, is 
proving what can be achieved by a practical man 
throwing himself upon practical men without any 
professional technicalities, and pouring gospel 
truth into their hearts in the every-day language 
of life. This corps in Christ's army will bear 



A Chriitian's Right Place. 159 

enlargement. They are un-uniformed sharpshoot- 
ers, stealing singly or in squads upon the enemy 
wherever a point is left exposed, or a strag- 
gler can be "sighted." 

What our Churches sorely need is the develop- 
merit of the members. Too much is thrown 
upon the ministry. The Church becomes Dr. 

A 's Church, or Mr. B 's Church, or 

Mr. C 's Church, instead of being the peo- 
ple's Church, with those men as its ministers. 
A pastor is expected to make two studied exposi- 
tions of Bible truth every week, to conduct the 
public devotions of his flock, to labor at the fire- 
side, in the sick-room, and the house of death. 
During our early ministry, we were called to do 
all these, and to superintend a Sunday-school 
and teach a Bible-class besides. Now we love to 
work better than anything else, unless it be to 
see other people work. And no member of our 
Church has any more right to turn over his spir- 
itual labors on me than he has to hand me his 
market-basket, or to ask me to eat and digest his 
dinner for him. He needs to do his own work 
as much as the cause of Christ needs to have it 
done. And when, in seasons of revival, the la- 



]6o A Chriftian's Right Place. 

tent lay power of the Church is brought out, we 
see how much may be done by the Priscillas and 
Aquilas, by Onesiphorus. and by Lydia, and by the 
"faithful Persis" who labors in the Lord. The 
Church then is a hive without a drone, and the 
air is musical with returning bees bringing in 
their blessed spoil. 

A Christian who is keen for work will soon 
find his right place. If he is " apt to teach," if 
he has the knack of breaking the truth up into 
small morsels for children's mouths, then he will 
soon scent his way into the Sabbath-school. An- 
other one has leisure and love of souls ; to such 
an one tract-distribution is a welcome work. It 
requires only health enough to walk, and Chris- 
tian courtesy enough to talk acceptably to the 
family visited with the Bible or the tract. It 
is not too much to say that Harlan Page, with 
his Gospel under his arm, is equal to many a 
learned divine, with his ponderous columbiads 
aimed forty degrees above the hearts of the peo- 
ple. 

Here again is another whose "gift" is a me- 
lodious voice — that " most excellent thing in wo- 
man," and hardly less so in a man. A homely 



A Chriftian's Right Place. 161 

woman becomes beautiful while she is singing ; 
and a melodious voice will outlive a plump form 
or a rosy complexion. Whoever can sing belongs 
to God's great multitudinous choir. Whoever 
can sing, and will not sing, does not deserve a 
seat in church or the feast of a good sermon. 
They will be ashamed to sing in heaven if they 
were too indolent or too fastidious to sing in the 
earthly temples of God's praise. 

Nor are these the only gifts. We can now re- 
call a member of our first flock who possessed no 
qualifications to exhort, or to teach in the Sab- 
bath-school ; he had no gold to give, and no mu- 
sical skill to sing the praise of his Redeemer. 
But he did possess a rare earnestness and Bible- 
richness and soul-fervor in prayer. That good 
old man's single prayer saved more than one 
evening meeting from drouth and dreariness. A 
blessed gift was that veteran's power of pleading 
at the mercy-seat; and a fountain of blessings 
did it prove to the Church for which he besought 
the heavenly baptism. 

Reader ! have you found your place ? Then 
stick to it. Work there, even though it be in 
the humblest corner of the most out-of-the way 
14* 



162 A Chriftian's Right Place. 

vineyard. An idle man in the Church is a mon- 
ster. And you cannot give a cup of gospel- water 
to a beggar's child without receiving Christ's 
smile in return for it. Wherefore " neglect not 
the gift that is in thee ;" and whatever thou do- 
est for the Lord, " do it heartily." 



^N@@/nS 



The Whole Heart. 



A FEW years ago, a distinguished American 
naturalist was discovered, by one of our 
vessels, wandering alone on the silent 
shores of the Pacific Ocean. He was strolling 
by the water-side on a sharp search for specimens 
of natural history for the cabinet of Harvard 
University. Five thousand long miles separated 
him from his comfortable Boston home. But 
what were privations, or loneliness, or scanty fare, 
or the absence of loved faces, to him ? Was not 
his whole soul embarked in the search for rare 
flowers such as flame on California plains, and 
for the cunning shells that the Pacific waves cast 
up on the pebbly strand ? His heart was in- 
vested in the enterprise ; he was a self-devoted 
missionary of science. 

This was the secret of Newton's imperial suc- 
cess. He gave his days and nights to physical 



164 The Whole Heart. 

science. And when his magnificent discoveries 
had been achieved, and the heavens had yielded 
their hidden secrets to his telescope, — when the 
solid globe had been weighed by him as in a 
balance, — then the Genius of Truth crowned his 
honored head with the benediction, u Thou hast 
sought me and found me, for thou didst search 
for me with all the heart? 1 

Show me the effective Christian, too, and I 
will show you a man whose whole heart is in love 
with Jesus. The will to serve God (implanted 
by the converting Spirit) is at no loss to find ten 
thousand ways to do it. He is " always abound- 
ing in the work of the Lord." On the Sabbath 
lie always manages to get to church, however 
fiercely the sun streams down its fire, or however 
violently the rain-cloud pours its deluge upon the 
pavements. His heart so aches for the poor waifs 
gathered into his mission-school class, that a 
headache is no hindrance to him. When the 
Wednesday night comes, it finds him weary with 
a long day's work; but the bell rings for the 
weekly lecture, and a heart-bell within responds 
to the welcome music. He says, " I cannot 
afford to miss my soul's food to-night.'' No more 



The Whole Heart. 165 

can his pastor afford to have him absent. It is 
so on the night for the prayer gathering. He 
will be missed if he takes counsel with tired 
limbs or sleepy eyes. His soul will miss the 
meeting, too, and be the leaner for the loss. So 
he fires up the engine once more, and with a 
wide-awake heart in a weary body, he sallies off 
to the prayer circle. The neighbor who dropped 
in to discuss the war, or to inquire about stocks, 
or to take a game of chess does not detain him. 
His heart is with Jesus and the disciples in the 
prayer meeting already, and his body " follows 
suit." Does a lover ever find the night too cold, 
too stormy, or too dark for him to venture off to 
find her "in whom his soul delighteth?" 

Such service of Christ is downright enjoy- 
ment. It is a daily luxury. It is none the les3 
enjoyable because it entails some hardships and 
self-denial ; because it sometimes sends a head 
wind of unpopularity into his face ; because it 
requires him to wear an old coat the longer in 
order to have a few extra dollars for a work of 
charity ; or because it involves some sacrifice of 
money-getting or of social comfort. He turns 
work into play. His soul lives in a constant 



166 The Whole Heart. 



sunshine ; and all the aches, the pains, the rheu- 
matisms, and bad digestion of a spiritual dyspep- 
tic, he knows no more of than of the plague or 
the Jewish leprosy. But take the heart out of 
a man's religion, and it becomes the most pitiable 
penance, and the dreariest of drudgeries. 

Perhaps, too, we may find in this very spot 
the reason why so many awakened and once 
anxious sinners have never yet found the Saviour. 
They only sought the infinite blessing with but a 
fraction of the heart. God was in earnest when 
he invited them ; they were not. The Spirit of 
grace was in earnest when he strove with them ; 
they were not. A fragment of the heart — a few 
hours of the Sabbath — an occasional fitful thought 
— they were willing to give to Christ if he would 
insure them a safe escape from perdition. But 
the very least and lowest terms which the blessed 
Saviour could offer them were, ' ' Ye shall seek 
me and find me when ye shall search for me 
vnth all your heart.'''' 

Unconverted reader, does not this touch the 
very "sore spot" with you? Is not this your 
very sin and danger ? You ask everything from 
God ; you will not give everything to him. Just 



The Whole Heart. 167 

as surely as the day of judgment comes and finds 
you hopeless and Christless, you will take up a 
bitter lamentation in words like these : "I am 
lost — lost for ever ! I might have been saved. 
I- often came near to heaven ; I was more than 
once at the threshold. Others passed by and 
went in. My intimate friend went in. A brother 
entered in at my very side ; my wife, with a 
tearful pleading to me to follow her, passed 
through the open door. I might have gone. 
Conscience bade me go. Reason urged it. A 
crucified Saviour with pierced hand, opened wide 
the gate. I expected to come in ere it should 
close. The Spirit strove with me to give God 
my heart. But the conditions of salvation were 
' Ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall 
search for me with all your heart. y This I 
would not give. I kept back what God asked, 
and I have lost everything P 1 To sink into per- 
dition is a fearful doom at best, but infinitely 
more harrowing and awful for the soul that re- 
members that it fell there from the very threshold 
of heaven ! 



Christ a Companion, 



ON a certain "first day" afternoon — more 
than eighteen hundred years ago — two 
men set out on foot from Jerusalem to the 
little village of Emmaus. The journey covered 
seven miles, but they were not easy miles to 
travel, for much of the way lay over rugged hill 
country and through deep ravines. The village 
toward which they walked is perched, like a 
bird's nest, on the cliffs that look off toward the 
Mediterranean Sea. It was a bright vernal 
landscape that smiled around them ; but sad 
hearts were they that moved slowly over the hills 
toward the mountain village. Talking sadly and 
despondingly of the terrible tragedy that had 
just been been enacted on Calvary, the two dis- 
ciples walked on. 

A stranger accosts them by the wayside. 
They do not know him. Their "eyes are 



Chrift a Companion. 169 

L olden." A supernatural obstruction blinds 
their vision for the time. So they address him 
as a stranger. " Art thou only a stranger in 
Jerusalem," inquires Cleopas, " and hast not 
known the things which are come to pass 
there in these days ?" " What things ?" Then 
they begin, and give a brief, artless narrative 
of the barbarous tragedy that had ended in 
the judicial murder of Him whom they had 
hailed as the Redeemer of Israel. "Oh, fools, 
and slow of heart !" exclaims the mysterious 
Stranger; "ought not Christ to have suffered 
these things, and to enter into his glory ?" And 
beginning at Moses and the prophets, he pours 
out upon them a stream of rich, instructive, and 
precious talk, that makes the road seem short to 
Emmaus. They are there before they are 
aware, and so charmed with their delightful 
companion, that they court his society for the 
night. " Abide with us," is their hospitable in- 
vitation. The kind offer is accepted. He comes 
into their house, reclines beside them at their 
table, and while he is breaking bread with them, 
he breaks the illusion, too; and lo, the affable 
comrade of the journey is no less a personage 
15 



170 Chrift a Companion. 

than their adorable Master. "Wonderful Guest ! 
Wonderful Instructor! "Did not our hearts 
burn within us as he talked with us by the way?" 
said one. "Mine did," replies the other. And 
well they might. For the light that had beamed 
on them, and the heavenly warmth that had kin- 
dled their souls, poured from no less a source 
than the divine heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Thanks for this delightful episode. I learn from 
it one precious lesson — that Christ Jesus is will- 
ing to be the companion of my life-journey 
until I reach my heavenly home. Blessed is the 
man whose heart bums within him from the con- 
stant presence and inspiration of the Saviour ! 

I. The first benefit to the believer from having 
Christ with him is, that the life-journey will be 
a safe one. He need never miss the right road. 
He will never be led astray. Christ knows the 
whole pathway thoroughly from the " City of 
Destruction" to the City of the Great King. 
And wherever Christ directs us to walk, there 
we ought to go. It matters not that we can not 
see the end from the beginning. Christ sees; 
that is enough. He sent Paul on many a perilous 
path of duty, and when the boiling deep threat- 



Chrift a Companion. 171 

ened to ingulf him, Jesus stood by him. and said, 
"Fear not, Paul; thou must jet stand before 
Cesar." The courage that quailed not in Nero's 
judgment hall is easily explained by the heroic 
apostle's assurance, " The Lord stood with me 
and strengthened me." What Christ did for 
Paul, he will do for you, my brother. Invite 
him to be your companion. Ask his direction : 
never take a decisive step in life without it. 
Covet his fellowship, for he that walketh with 
Jesus "walketh surely." 

II. The life-journey, in the second place, is 
made pleasant by having the Saviour as our 
constant associate. You all know the charm 
that is imparted to a voyage by having a genial 
friend to pace the deck with us in confiding con- 
versation, to gaze with us on the glories of the 
changful ocean, and drink in the witchery of the 
sunrises and the sun settings. The road to Em- 
maus may have seemed long to Cleopas and his 
companion in other times, but when the affable 
Stranger joined them, how fast the furlongs were 
measured off! How unweariedly they climbed the 
rugged hills! Charming was that excursion 
from the charm of such society. 



172 Chrift a Companion. 

Christian believer, you may walk your daily 
life-journey with the same celestial companion- 
ship if you keep a good conscience and a pray- 
ing heart. Begin each day with a cordial in- 
vitation to Jesus Christ to vouchsafe to you his 
presence. Think of him all the while as close 
by you. The busy bustle of the counting room 
did not hinder the fellowship with Christ of 
Henry Thornton, of Garret Bleeeker, and many 
a godly-minded merchant like them. Many a 
farmer has communed with Jesus as he followed 
his plow, until the acres that he trod had " the 
smell of a field that the Lord had blessed." 
Many a pious housewife has made the hours seem 
short as to the merry music of her wheel her 
heart has sung, — 

" No journey is without its cares : 
Life's journey, too, the spirit wears, 

It is not all a path of roses ; 
The road is narrow ; foes are strong, 
And oft mislead me to the wrong ; 

The tangled thorn my way opposes ; 
O'er sorrow's wilds I'm forced to go, 
And groping march the journev through. 

" But Jesus, once a pilgrim too, 
"Will be with me a pilgrim true, 
Of all my anxious cares a bearer. 



Chriit a Companion. 173 



Thy warning words in mind I'll keep, 
And by thy guidance every step 

Shall bring me to salvation nearer, 
Till to my journey's end I come, 
And live with thee in yonder home." 



We may have hard and trying places just be- 
fore us on our life-march. Sick rooms and beds 
of suffering may be a few weeks or months in 
advance. Perhaps the agonies of a military hos- 
pital, with its festering wounds and racking pains, 
may be preparing for some patriot, who reads 
these lines. But no part of our pilgrimage is 
more cheerful than that which is spent in the 
sick room, with the blessed Saviour as the com- 
panion of our meditations and devotions. " Here 
I lie," said the heroic Haly burton, " pained with- 
out pain; without any strength, and yet strong. 
I am not faint ; I am refreshed with the spiced 
wine. Christ comes to me in the watches of the 
night and draws aside the curtains, and says, 'It 
is i, it is I; be not afraid P" His heart 
burned within him with a holier glow as he 
neared the journey's end, and took the way up- 
ward from the land of Beulah to the gates of 
the Celestial City. 

15* 



174 Chrift a Companion. 

III. Once more. Christ's presence with be- 
lievers shames them from sin and stimulates 
them to duty. Paul assures us that Jesus is 
" made unto us sanctification" as well as redemp- 
tion ; i.e., his spirit is a spirit of holiness. And 
when we live in union with Jesus, it has a ten- 
dency to makes us holy. 

The sense of Christ's immediate presence is a 
perpetual check upon our lusts and passions — a 
perpetual spur to our spiritual indolence. Are 
we tempted to hurry off in the morning under 
the pressings of business without our usual 
season of devotion? The thought that Jesus 
witnesses the petty larceny of his few moments 
is enough to send us mortified and penitent to 
our closet. Does an irritating vexation prompt 
the sharp answer or the angry blow ? One look 
from the all-forgiving Lamb is enough to hush 
the tumult and smooth the ruffled brow* Am I 
tempted to a keen bargain ? " Why not ?" "It 
is all fair in business." Yes ! but what will 
Christ say ? And so on through all the calen- 
dar of besetting sins. The sin-hating eye of my 
spotless Saviour follows me by day and by night ; 
and while in his holy fellowship how dare I play 



Chrift a Companion 175 

the coward, the cheat, the sensualist, or the pol- 
troon ? 

" How will my wicked passions dare 
Consent to sin while Christ is there?" 

He who walks in the blessed company of 
Jesus while he lives, is sure of the same divine 
companionship when he reaches the dying bed. 
And then, when all earthly loved ones are giv- 
ing, through tears and sobbings, their last fare- 
wells, this Friend, that sticketh closer than a 
brother, sweetly whispers, " Fear not; I will 
never leave thee. Where I am, ye shall be also. 
Having loved my own, I love them to the end. 
Thou shalt be for ever ivith the Lord." 



-eeS3SBS»S©* 








An Evening on the Cayuga. 

HERE, Augustine ! take this paper ; I have 
read war news enough for to-day, and 
more than enough from that Aceldama of 
" Bull Run ;" push off the boat, and let us have 
one hour's blessed truce on the bosom of this be- 
witching lake. Leave the nightmare of news be- 
hind us. It is Saturday evening. The last 
parting kiss of the setting sun is making yonder 
hilltop blush. To-morrow's Sabbath lies hid be- 
yond those eastern forests. Trim the boat, and 
hand me an oar. 

Our friend takes his place in the stern, and 
the little shallop floats like a swan over the wa- 
ter. A glassy wavelet flows away from the bow, 
and a little gurgle is heard under the rudder. 
This is the only sound that is audible except the 
tinkle of a bell that is wandering amid that herd 
of cows in the green pasture-ground beyond the 



An Evening on the Cayuga. 177 

road. The bell sounds livelier, for the barefoot- 
ed boy is starting the full-uddered cows home- 
ward for the milking. Somebody will have a 
luscious bowl of bread and milk to-night, fragrant 
and creamy, just such as my boyhood used to 
feast upon. I have sat since at the tables of Pa- 
risian hotels and of English mansions ; but never 
have I tasted such flavors as were hidden in that 
porringer where the bread and milk combined the 
aroma of the new-ground grain and the sweet- 
breathed clover. I pity the unlucky fledgling of 
Fifth Avenue, who never feasted his childhood on 
a bowl of snow-white bread and newly-strained 
milk, eaten on the broad piazza of a shady farm- 
house. Midas has a splendid palace of freestone 
on Murray Hill, but he cannot " keep a dairy," 
or regale himself with the " sincere milk" warm 
from the udder. 

Look a momant at yonder group of cattle who 
are standing leg-deep in the shallow water of the 
lake under those sycamores, switching the cool 
drops over their backs with their tufted tails. It 
is a picture for Cuyp. A big farm-dog, with 
loud bark, dashes into the lake and hurries the 
loiterers on. The barefoot boy cracks his whip, 



178 An Evening on the Cayuga. 

(made of poplar bark.) and the procession is in 
motion again. The milking will be late to-night. 
Old-fashioned New England was wont to finish 
its week's work and to fold up its cares by sunset 
on Saturday evening. 

Now let us halt the boat a moment. Lift up 
the oar, and let the "musical pearls" trickle off 
into the water. Look down into the depths. It 
is not the green of Niagara and of Church's cat- 
aract. It is not the blue of Lake Leman. It is 
a shade between both, and so clear that we can 
count the stripes on the backs of the perch that 
are swimming half-way to the bottom. A mile 
beyond us — where the salmon trout are taken 
with two hundred feet lines — the water is as dark 
and impenetrable as the Atlantic. Three miles 
of rowing will carry us across the lake to the 
shores of Seneca. From the point where our 
boat is floating, the bay of Aurora looks like a 
miniature Bay of Naples. Imagine the beauti- 
ful village to be Naples, and yonder Prospect 
Hill with its cottage-smoke rising from the sum- 
mit to be Yesuvius, and you have the " glory of 
the Mediterranean" seen through the smaller end 
of a spy-glass. In all my life-wanderings, I 



An Evening on the Cayuga. 179 

have never seen a village as faultless and fair as 
yonder Aurora, which is just now bidding the 
lake good-night. 

For half a mile the shore is lined with gardens 
and summer-houses. Behind them, the pointed 
gables of elegant villas rise through the trees ; 
and the broad street is sentinelled with a regiment 
of elms and poplars. Up on the hillside, over 
the tree-tops, we can just catch a glimpse in the 
twilight of white objects gleaming among the 
foliage. That is the churchyard — death's silent 
fold in which the dark-browed shepherd tends his 
sleeping flock. He unlooses not even the ten- 
derest lamb until that morning when the resur- 
rection-angel shall roll away the stones from the 
narrow door, and they that hear a greater Shep- 
herd's voice shall come forth. Two graves we 
can almost detect from this distance ; in one of 
them sleeps the father of the village, in the other, 
the father of the hand that pens this simple 
sketch. Long years ago, on a summer morning, 
we can yet detect a group of weeping villagers 
gathered around this last-named grave, and 
among them a wondering child of four years old, 
who, with silent awe, leans over to gaze into a 



180 An Evening on the Cayuga. 

narrow pit that he fancies to be the gate into 
eternity. How vividly comes back that scene to 
us now — with its harsh grating of the descending 
coffin against the gravel, and the heavy sound of 
the descending clods upon the sleeper's breast, 
and the rustle of departing footsteps through the 
rank grass of the church-yard. A few days af- 
ter that scene, a sprig of myrtle was planted on 
that new-made mound, but five and thirty years 
have expanded it into a dark- green mantle that 
now covers a dozen graves in the neighborhood. 
"We always judge of the refinement of a town by 
its keeping of its cemetery. A well-inclosed, 
well-shaded, well-trimmed church-yard bespeaks 
a cultivated community. But heaven preserve 
us from living among a people who leave their 
own fathers and mothers to decay in a neglect- 
ed sheep-pasture under a wilderness of broken 
stones and mullen-stalks ! My native village, I 
am happy to see, " sets a watch " at the door of 
its sacred sepulchres. 

The twilight deepens, as we row along the 
margin of lawn and gardens. That building 
which begins to show many lights is the village 
hotel, now occupied by wanderers from the city. 



An Evening on the Cayuga. 181 

Among its guests is the most eminent sculptor 
who dwells on American soil. In his room he 
has now hanging the last and finest landscape of 
James Hart. We spent an hour before it to-day ; 
it is a noon-day scene in the valley of the Hou- 
satonic. It was a pleasant thing to study a pic- 
ture by Hart in company with Palmer. Inter 
arma silent artes. May returning peace soon 
again give employment to the chisel that pro- 
duced the "Indian Maiden" and the "White 
Captive." 

Yonder comes the moon ! There is a great 
fire kindling through the trees beyond the grave- 
yard, and then a long bar of shimmering gold be- 
gins to lay itself across the waters. Voices float 
through the silvered air ; a party of singers are 
in the boat that steals in and out among the shad- 
ows by the shore. When is music so bewitching 
as on the water of a placid lake on a moonlit 
evening ? Listening to those mellow voices, 

" My soul is an enchanted boat, 
Whi£h, like a sleeping swan, doth float 
Upon the silver waves of this sweet singing.' 

We go back to the distant past on those strains. 



182 An Evening on the Cayuga. 

We hear again sounds long silenced, and voices 
that have passed into the harmonies of the heav- 
enly world. We hear a mother's cradle-hymn. 
We listen to " Sweet Home" sung at the evening 
fireside. The grand old Sabbath airs — chanted 
in yonder church or the one that stood there be- 
fore it — sound in our ears from lips now silent in 
the tomb. We hear again the dirge on which 
our griefs were borne up when we went out to 
bury our dead. Sing on, sweet minstrels ! It 
is a fitting prelude to to-morrow's Sabbath wor- 
ship. And so when the Saturday evening of our 
life shall come, may voices sweeter yet than yours 
fall upon our dying ear, the prelude to celestial 
anthems that shall usher in the morning of an 
eternal day ! 

Aueora, July 27, 1861. 



C-#w/'-jSU> 



Light-Holders. 

EVERY voyager through the British Channel 
will remember the famous light-house that 
stands near the gates of the Atlantic. It 
rises from a rock in the midst of the waves ; its 
beacon-blaze streams far out over the midnight 
sea. The angry waves, for many a long year, 
have rolled in — thundering against the tower's 
base. The winds of heaven have warred fiercely 
around its pinnacle ; the rains have dashed against 
its gleaming lantern. But there it stands. It 
moves not, it trembles not ; it is founded on a 
rock. Year after year, the storm-tossed mariner 
looks out for its star-like light as he sweeps in 
through the British Channel. It is one of the 
first objects that meets his eye as he returns on his 
homeward voyage ; it is one of the last which he 
beholds after his native shores have sunk beneath 



184 Light-Holders. 

the evening wave. On the base of its tower is 
this inscription : " To give light and to save 
life:' 

That tower of Eddystone is a Light-Holder 
to all who come within its range. It does not 
create light, it only sheds it, and " giveth light" 
to every passer-by on his watery way. This 
image of a light-house may have been in the 
Apostle's mind when he wrote to the Philippians 
of the surrounding, heathen and idolators, and 
said to them, " Among whom ye shine as lights 
in the world." Some translate the word torch- 
bearers. Others hold that it refers to stars in a 
dark night. All the interpretations look to the 
same idea, viz., that Christians are Christ's 
light-holders to their fellow-menP 

The lantern of a light-house is not self-lumin- 
ous. It has to be kindled by a hand from with- 
out itself. By nature, every Christian is as 
unfitted to give spiritual light as the empty tower 
on Minors Reef or on Sandy Hook would be to 
guide the mariner at midnight. God creates the 
natural power, the mental faculties, as the 
builder rears the stone-tower of Eddystone or 
Sandy Hook. Neither natural heart or stone- 



Light-Holders. 185 

tower are self-luminous. A hand from without 
must bring them light. 

Conversion by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual 
illumination of the soul. God's grace lights up 
the dark heart. Sometimes suddenly, as in the 
case of Paul. Sometimes, as in the case of John 
Newton, there is at first a feeble germ of light, 
like the little blue point of flame on a candle- 
wick, and this germ of light grows into a clear, 
full blaze. The beginning of true religion is in 
the first acts of sincere penitence — the first breath- 
ings of earnest prayer — the first hungerings after 
God — the first honest attempt to do right and 
to serve the Lord. God's grace, remember, is the 
only original source of the light that makes any 
man a luminary in society. And when a man 
has once been kindled at the cross of Christ, he 
is bound to shine. 

And, in order to do this, he need not be con- 
spicuous in society for talents, wealth, or intel- 
lectual culture. The modest candle by which a 
housewife threads her needle shines as truly as 
does the great lantern that burns in the tower of 
a City Hall. 

An humble saint who begins his day with 
16* 



186 Light-Holders. 

household devotions, and serves his God all day 
in his shop, or at his work-bench, is as truly a 
light-holder as if he flamed from Spurgeon's pul- 
pit or illuminated a theological class from a pro- 
fessor's chair. To " shine" means something 
more than the mere possession of piety, or the 
enjoyment of piety ; it is the reflection of Gos- 
pel religion that makes the burner. 

Martin Luther was an Eddystone-tower to be- 
wildered Europe. . On the other hand, the hum- 
blest tract-visitor or mission-school teacher is a 
lantern-bearer to guide some lost wanderers toward 
heaven. Harlan Page, the pious carpenter, never 
talked with a person for ten minutes without 
saying something to benefit his soul. He was a 
steady burner ; so was Deacon Safford, of Boston. 
Thomas Dakin, a poor pensioner of Greenwich 
Hospital, distributed over one hundred thousand 
tracts every year, and when at last death smote 
him down suddenly, his pockets were found filled 
with tracts entitled, " Are you prepared to die ?" 
Dr. Nettleton carried his gospel-lamp from town 
to town — held it forth every evening to gathered 
companies of anxious souls — and during his life- 
time guided many thousands to a knowledge of 



Light-Holders. 187 

the Saviour. Oh ! what a heaven Nettleton 
•will have ! 

If every Christian who trims his lamp and 
keeps the oil of grace up to its full supply is 
such a blessed benefactor to others, what a terri- 
ble thing it is for a Christian to let his light go 
out ! A traveller who once visited a light-house 
in the British Channel said to the keeper, " But 
what if one of your lights should go out at 
night?" "Never," said the keeper, "never — 
impossible. Sir, yonder are ships sailing to all 
parts of the world. If to-night my burner were 
out, in a few days I might hear, from France, or 
Spain, or from Scotland or America, that on 
such a night the light-house in the Channel gave 
no warning, and some vessel had been wrecked. 
Ah ! sir, I sometimes feel, when I look at my 
lights, as if the eyes of the whole world were 
fixed on me. Go out ! Burn dim ! never, Sir, 
never /" 

How closely this incident comes home to us all. 
Perhaps in eternity I may hear that some pre- 
cious soul was wrecked, because my pulpit was 
not a faithful light-holder to my congregation. 
Some Gospel-burners were neglected and grew 



1 88 Light-Holders. 

dim. One man, perhaps, stumbled into a drunk- 
ard's grave, because I did not -warn him soon 
enough against the peril of the first glass. An- 
other broke God's Sabbath for want of keeping 
the fourth commandment trimmed and burning. 
Before another was not held up the exceeding 
sinfulness of sin ; and Jesus, the light of the 
world, may not have been set forth aright to 
wandering sinners. " Go out — burn dim I" God 
help me to say, " Never — never !" 

I know of certain households in which I fear 
the lamp is out. That boy would not be seen so 
often on his way to the theatre, or the drinking- 
saloon, if father and mother held up the torch of 
loving warning ! That giddy daughter, who was 
once thoughtful about her soul, might now be a 
Christian, if there had been a light-holder near 
at hand, to guide her to Jesus. There was a 
lamp of profession in the house. It did not 
shine. The oil was out. Love of the world had 
extinguished it. That dark lantern left the 
house in midnight. 

Thank God ! some lights never go out. Death 
cannot quench them. They shine forever. Lu- 
ther's great lantern, " the just shall live by 



Light-Holders. 189 

faith" still gleams from Wartburg Castle. 
John Bunyan's lamp twinkles yet through the 
gratings of Bedford Jail. Old John Brown is 
still lighting ten thousand fugitive footsteps to 
liberty. Pastors, parents, teachers, may be 
called home to heaven ; but like the good mother 
of the story, they "set a light in the window," 
to guide souls to the mansions of glory. 



" Then gird your loins, my brethren dear, 
That distant home discerning; 
Our absent Lord has left us word, 
Let every lamp be burning 1" 



Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, 

" rfl HE Henry Clay of the pulpit !" exclaimed 

our friend H , as he moved out 

through the crowded vestibule of Dr. 
Guthrie's church on a bright September morning 
of last year. He had sat for nearly an hour, en- 
tranced under the spell of the first living orator 
of North Britain. He had listened to that rich 
melody of Scotticized English, flowing from a 
soul on fire, through lips touched with the live 
coal of heaven's own inspiration. There was 
something in the tall, long-armed figure of the 
preacher — in his latitude of mouth and expanse 
of brow — that reminded our friend of the great 
Kentuckian in his glory ; there was still more in 
the magnetism of the man — holding, bewitching, 
electrifying all auditors : and so the comparison 
grew stronger at every moment. Guthrie resem- 
bles Clay in something more than physique. He 



Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 191 

has the same emotional power, and the same ora- 
torical tact, with a stroDger memory, and a more 
varied and choice phraseology than the silver- 
tongued Kentuckian ever possessed. Since Chal- 
mers went up to his reward, Scotland has had no 
pulpit orator who can attract and hold such con- 
gregations of intellectual piety as Thomas Guth- 
rie. Not so erudite as Candlish [nor so uncouth 
either], not so classical as Caird, not so able in 
Church economics as Cunningham, he yet pos- 
sesses a range of pulpit power beyond either of 
those remarkable men. In pathos he is unrival- 
led. During the delivery of the celebrated dis- 
courses on the " Sins and Sorrows of Great Ci- 
ties," tears stole down over hard "canny" Scotch 
visages from eyes unused to w T eep. The lecture 
on "Ragged Schools" — pronounced in London 
four years ago — contains passages that stir the 
fount of tears like the most pathetic scenes de- 
picted by Gough in his marvellous dramatic ef- 
forts. 

This intensity of emotion and rare fluency of 
speech — which make Guthrie so effective in the 
pulpit — place him in the front rank of living 
platformers. At one moment his audience are 



192 Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 

convulsed with laughter under his broad, riotous 
fun ; in the next they are hushed into a breath- 
holding by the fine touches of his delicate pathos. 
Guthrie has what is essential to all platform suc- 
cess — enthusiastic downrightness. He feels 
nothing, expresses nothing " by halves. 1 ' He is 
whole-souled, outspoken, brave, sanguine, and un- 
compromising. More than all, he is that rara 
avis — a Calvinistic reformer. Stiff as John 
Knox in his theology, he is as large and liberal 
as the present Lord Shaftesbury in his philan- 
thropy. One of the few eminent Scotch divines 
who has opened his lips for teetotalism (instead 
of opening them for the wine-glass, like too many 
of his predecessors) — one of the earliest battlers 
for "non-intrusion" — a ready spokesman for 
anti-slavery, mechanics' schools, and shoe-black 
brigades, he yet builds up all his plans and argu- 
ments for humanitarian reform on a firm, stout 
Calvinistic basis. His doctrines are the doctrines 
of Geneva ; his ethics are the ethics of Exeter 
Hall. In this respect he is a representative man, 
rearing on the old foundations of total depravity 
and justification by faith, the practical, open- 
doored asylums for human guilt and woe ; the 



Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 193 

practical realization of human recovery. There 
is room in our own land for more of this wise and 
winsome Christian charity. The only way to 
save the precious interests of freedom and tem- 
perance from final ruin, is to rescue them from 
the hands of Pelagian philanthropists and scold- 
ing freethinkers, and commit them to men who 
recognize in the Divine Redeemer the world's un- 
derlying hope of salvation. 

Thomas Guthrie is in the vigor of a ripe three- 
score — having been born in the opening year of 
this century. His native town is Brechin, a 
thrifty town of linen-manufacture, not far from 
the river Esk. Among the hills of Forfarshire, 
in view of the tempestuous North Sea, he spent 
his boyhood. One of his most famous parishion- 
ers, and most intimate friends, the world-known 
Hugh Miller, was born at Cromarty, on the 
coast of the same " mare Germanicum." Guth- 
rie and Miller were bosom friends, co-workers in 
the Free Kirk movement, and sympathetic in 
their passion for outdoor life and nature's kindly 
face. In his early life, Guthrie gave himself to 
a course of medical study, so that like Richard 
Baxter and the late missionary Scudder, he can 
17 



194 ^ r - Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 

prescribe for the ailments of both soul and body. 
After a medical course at Paris, and a theologi- 
cal course at Edinburgh, he was ordained over 
the parish of Arbirlot in Forfarshire. 

From his rustic flock, Guthrie was invited to 
Old Grayfriars church in the Scottish Athens ; 
and until this hour those modern Athenians, who 
love nothing so much "as either to hear or to 
tell some new thing," find no such delight as in 
listening to "Gooth-rie." His church is as 
thronged as Spurgeon's. Admittance is granted 
by ticket ; and our friend, the late Dr. Alexan- 
der, told us that he once nearly lost his coat from 
his back in the pressure of the suffocating crowd. 
The edifice is not large ; nay, it is a burning 
shame that Edinburgh has not reared for her 
most eloquent orator such a house as Brooklyn 
has built for Beecher, and London is rearing for 
the young Whitfield of Surrey Hall. " Why 
don't you give your minister a bigger church ?" 
inquired an American of one of Guthrie's parish- 
ioners. u Ah!" replied the calculating Scotch- 
man, "what if Dr. Goothrie should die; and 
then what 'na would we do wi' it?" This same 
question often presents itself to us when we hear 



Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 195 

of the mammoth Coliseum that is projected for 
the blazing "star" on Brooklyn Heights. 

To the same seething crowd, Dr. Guthrie 
preaches his earnest, and picturesque, and soul- 
melting discourses every Lord's day. The leaves 
of the Bible flutter back and forth — as if a little 
breeze swept through the house — whenever the 
preacher makes a Scripture quotation. All eyes 
are rivetted on the tall, awkward athlete, who is 
dealing his tremendous strokes from the pulpit. 
All ears are open to catch the lowest notes of his 
pathetic undertones. All hearts sway to the 
touch of the divinely inspired magician. 

He preaches Christ. This is the secret of his 
oratory — the glory of his ministry. When plead- 
ing with broken utterances for the neglected and 
besotted outcast, he sets forth Jesus as the Sa- 
viour of the poor, whom all "the common people 
heard gladly." When expounding the visions 
of Ezekiel, he detects in many a prophetic line 
the trace of Jesus' coming footstep. When pour- 
ing the thunder of his argument for a Free Kirk 
and a free pulpit, he is on fire with holy loyalty, 
for he is denying the claims of arrogant " Caesar" 
to rule the Church, and he is insisting that " there 



196 Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh. 

is another king, one Jesus." It is to Jesus, the 
author and finisher of faith, that the ejes of all 
the breathless assembly are pointed ; none other 
name is heard before that name of Him who saves 
His people from their sins. 

Such is Thomas Guthrie in his splendid matu- 
rity of sixty. May that melodious voice — a score 
of years hence — still be heard, in no faltering 
tones, pkeaching Jesus ! 



Three 
Pictures on My Study-wall. 

THREE pictures look down upon me this morn- 
ing from my study-wall. One of them is 
of the man whose name makes the " high- 
water mark" to which pulpit power has attained 
in this XlXth century. Looking at that lofty 
mountain of a brow, we do not wonder that great 
senators and statesmen crowded in to hear him 
preach, and that Canning, after hearing one of 
his magnificent discourses, exclaimed, "The 
tartan beats us all." Chalmers's eyes in this 
portrait look slumberous — like dull furnaces that 
wait to be kindled. His broad, benign face has 
a fine leisurely look ; the mouth is as obstinate 
as Washington's. Chalmers's great pulpit feat 
was his "Astronomical Discourses;" his great 

1>7* 



198 Three Pictures on my Study-wall. 

feat in philanthropy was in bringing the Gospel 
to the outcast poor by means of kirk-visitation 
and ragged-schools : his feat of ecclesiastical gen- 
eralship was in launching and conducting to vic- 
torious success the Free Church of Scotland. 
When an enthusiastic Scotchman had finished a 
glowing eulogy of the pulpit-masters of his 
Church, some one said, "What about Chal- 
mers?" "Ah," replied the Scotchman, " Chal- 
mers is the mon that tak's the breath oot 0' ye." 
On the opposite wall hangs the other illus- 
trious Caledonian of this century. Look at that 
shaggy pow — that wrinkled forehead scarred with 
mental toil — those grizzly whiskers hanging over 
the rumpled shirt-collar — that stone-mason's 
jacket wrapping as true a gentleman as God ever 
made — look at the gnarled and knotty head, so 
top-heavy with brains that it hangs over toward 
the right shoulder, and you will see how Hugh 
Miller looked when he wrote the " Old Red 
Sandstone." Those who have known Miller only 
as the profound geologist, will see him in a new 
and equally striking character if they will get 
the lately published volume of splendid and 
elaborate "Essays, Historical and Critical," 



Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 199 

which he wrote while editor of The Edinburgh 
Witness. Every line cost him hard labor ; for 
he wrote very much as he hammered granite in 
the quarries of Cromarty. To Hugh Miller be- 
longs the credit of handling the most vigorous 
and graceful pen ever wielded by a practical 
mechanic. These brilliant essays are selected 
out of one thousand which he contributed to 
The Witness ; and each one is as finished as 
one of Palmer's marbles ! As I look at that 
toppling tun of brain, overhung with the shaggy 
forest of hair, I can understand the source of 
these crystal streams of thought ; they are the 
mountain streams like those which flow down Ben 
Lomond. I would not exchange those two por- 
traits of Scotland's kings for any single picture 
in the Academy of Design ; for they are a gift 
from the Dr. John Brown who gave the world 
" Rab and his Friends." 

Between Chalmers and Miller hangs a greater 
than either — the man in fact, who helped to 
make them both. The picture represents a 
thin, emaciated countenance, of which nothing 
scarcely remains but eyes, brow, and long beard ; 
the quaint form is propped up with pillows ; the 



200 Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 

bloodless hand is laid on an open Bible. A 
group of bearded men in ruffs and robes are 
gathered around his dying bed. They are the 
Syndics of Geneva assembled to hear the last 
words of John Calvin. The patriarch in the 
foreground is Far el, now eighty years old — who 
has journeyed from Neufchatel to get one more 
grasp of the hand that wrote those fifty volumes 
of theology that will outlast the stars. Calvin 
looks as old as he ;,for into the fifty -five years of 
his life was compressed the work of a score of 
giants, and a host of diseases within and foes 
without have worn him to a skeleton. Little 
children, as they look at that ghastly face, would 
at first be repelled with fear. But they would 
not have drawn back from the original. Calvin, 
with all his stern theology, and his vehement 
hatred for tyranny and imposture and supersti- 
tion, had a warm, fervid heart beating under the 
unsubduable granite of his will. He was a lov- 
able man. His wife found a warm southerly ex- 
posure on one side of his Alpine mind, where 
her affection grew like the soft blue flowers that 
grow in the green clefts of the base of Mont 
Blanc. He returned Luther's affection cordially. 



Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 20 1 

Melancthon often said to him that he " wished he 
could only lay his weary head upon that faithful 
heart and die there. When Idelette de Bures, 
his wife, was laid in her grave, his grief was 
overwhelming, and he confesses that it required 
the strongest effort to keep him from sinking. 
The common people of Geneva so loved him that, 
on his return from unjust banishment, they wel- 
comed him back with shouts of acclamation ; and 
to-day, if the precise place in which his ashes 
sleep were known, the best living men of Geneva 
would build a monument above his dust such as 
Oxford built for her sainted martyrs, and Edin- 
burgh for Walter Scott. 

Everything that can be known about Calvin 
the world is anxious to hear. Presbyterians 
cherish his very shoe-lachet. He not only or- 
ganized their church-system, but became the 
great organizing spirit of the Reformed churches 
throughout Europe. For the majestic doctrine 
of the Divine Sovereignty, Calvin did what Lord 
Bacon did for the philosophy of Induction. For 
republican freedom he did a work that made Ge- 
neva not only the freest but the most virtuous 
city on the Continent. It was not only Edwards 



202 Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 

who built on foundations which Calvin had laid ; 
but in building up free commonwealths, John 
Hampden, William the Silent, and George 
Washington reared on those same foundations 
too. It is not too much to say that John Calvin 
underlies not only all the sound Biblical the- 
ology, but all the republican liberty upon the 
globe. Even the most sagacious Romanists con- 
fess that his immortal Institutes constitute "the 
Koran, or rather the Talmud of the Protestant 
heresy." 

We therefore thank Dr. Merle D'Aubigne 
that he has found time in his sweet villa on the 
banks of Lake Leman to give the wt)rld his two 
late superb volumes on " The History of the 
Reformation in the times of Calvin." We 
thank, too, those loyal Scottish- Americans' the 
Carter Brothers, that they have given us the 
volumes in such an attractive dress, and under 
an arrangement which will insure to its eloquent 
author a share in the pecuniary profits of hia 
toil. These books read like a romance. No 
man but a Christian and a Frenchman could have 
written them. The whole spirit of the Reforma- 
tion-period is photographed on these sparkling 



Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 203 

pages ; we catch a most beautiful portrait of that 
sweet angel of the churches, Mary of Alencon; 
while through the whole work we follow the 
Genevan hero as we follow William of Nassau 
through Motley's charming history of the Dutch 
Eepublic. 

On the record of Calvin's conversion D'Au- 
bigne's volumes throw new light. That conver- 
sion was sudden and decisive. At the beginning 
of the year 1527, the youthful Calvin was so 
obstinately enslaved to Popery that it seemed 
impossible that his feet should ever be plucked 
out of the mire. Before the year closed, he was 
emancipated into the liberty of the sons of God. 
His cousin, Robert Olivetan, began the work. 
The fires of Romish persecution warmed the 
seeds of truth in his heart. But God's Spirit 
wrought the transformation. " When I was the 
obstinate slave of Popish superstition," says 
Calvin himself, "and it seemed impossible to 
drag me out of the deep mire, God by a sudden 
conversion subdued me, and made my heart 
obedient to his Word." When a city is taken, a 
sudden assault may place the conquering flag on 
the ramparts, yet for many months that con- 



204 Three Pictures on My Study-wall. 

queror may have been battering at the walls. 
The truth by which Calvin's strongly- fortified 
heart was stormed and carried by the Spirit was 
the simple, irresistible truth that Jesus Christ 
died to save sinners. 

In these days of tremendous battles for God's 
Right against the Devil's Wrong, every pastor 
and every patriot may catch new inspiration from 
the heroic story of John Calvin's stern^ vic- 
torious fight for truth and liberty. D'Aubigne's 
book has nerved me anew to pray and hope for 
our country's deliverance ; and as I look up at 
the central figure on my study walls, I am 
thankful to believe with D'Aubigne that "the 
greatest of modern republics may boast as its 
father the valiant Reformer on the shores of 
Lake Leman." 



<7N@©^ 



Eternity. 



"T NEVER can forget that word which was 
once whispered to me in an inquiry-meet- 
ing." "What word was it?" " It was 
the word Eternity. A young Christian friend, 
who was yearning for my salvation, came up to 
me as I sat in my pew, and simply whispered, 
' Eternity' in my ear with great solemnity and 
tenderness, and then left me. That word made 
me think, and I found no peace till I came to 
the cross of Christ for salvation." 

It is enough to make any one think. My 
friend, have you ever taken the measure of that 
word? Have you ever weighed it? You are 
wearing out life, perhaps, in the desperate en- 
deavor to grow rich ; have you ever asked your- 
self how much you will be " worth" in eternity? 
Some men will be millionaires in heaven : men 
18 



206 Eternity. 

like Paul, and Oberlin, and Luther, and Wilber- 
force ; how rich will you be when death has re- 
duced your form to a house of six feet by two ? 
You are anxious, perhaps, about your society on 
earth ; have you thought, With whom shall I 
spend my eternity ? and where ? 

Eternity ! Dwell on that portentous word. 
Revolve it. Study it. Hang over its infinite 
depths ; fathom it, if you can. Gaze upward, 
and scale its heights-, if you can. Stretch away 
over its illimitable breadth ; measure it, if you 
can. Grive wings to your imagination and speed 
onward ; find its e?id, if you can. 

Think of as many centuries as there are drops 
in yonder Atlantic. When these have all passed 
away, begin a new series of as many centuries as 
there are sands on the Atlantic shores. Multiply 
all these centuries by the number of the stars in 
the sky, and then remember that eternity has but 
begun ! The music of heaven just opened ! The 
remorseful agonies of the pit still in their first 
pangs of wretchedness ; the death of the lost soul 
ever undying ! Let but the lost soul be left to 
itself — let it only grow worse and worse by the 
natural law of growth in iniquity — let all grace 



Eternity. 207 

be totally withdrawn and the soul be given up to 
upbraid itself, and torture itself, and sting itself 
with hateful memories forever, and you need to 
conceive of no material hell. You need no ac- 
cessories. We are not obliged to conceive of a 
sulphurous lake foaming in crests of fire, nor of 
undying worms shooting their fangs into writhing 
forms ; the simple withdrawal of God's love for- 
ever from a wicked soul, and the imprisonment 
of that soul forever in a dungeon of depravity 
without a ray of hope, this will be a " death 
everlasting" too fearful to think of without a 
shudder. 

At the end of myriads of centuries, these 
pangs will have just begun ! The worm yet un- 
dying — the fires of remorse yet un quenched ! 
The damnation unslumbering ! On every wall 
of this vast prison-house of despair the self- tor- 
tured soul will read, as in letters of fire, " Ye 
knew your duty, and ye did it notP 

Heaven will be as endless in its joys as hell is 
endless in its remorseful agonies of soul. So I 
read, for one, the revelations of God's Word. In 
heaven new joys must open every moment. New 
recognitions of the Lord ; new discoveries of 



2o3 Eternity. 

God's unexhausted truth. New strains of rapture 
will fill the ear ; new banquets of God's beauty 
and glory fill the soul. And yet newer, fresher, 
sublimer, more magnificent revelations ever burst- 
ing upon the glorified spirit ! 



" How long art thou, Eternity ? 
As long as God is God — so long 
Endure the pangs of sin and wrong : 
So long the joys of Heaven remain ; 
Oh ! endless joy ! oh ! endless pain ! 
Ponder, oh man ! Eternity!" 



This eternity is just at the door. You and I 
may be launched into it before to-morrow's sun 
goes down. What is time to us but the brief 
hour for preparing to meet the destinies of that 
eternal state ? What have we to do but to save 
our souls, and to save others, too, with the ut- 
most alacrity of Christian love ? Every moment 
spent for God and our fellow-men now will yield 
its centuries of bliss. Let us live — as earth's 
best and holiest have lived — in the light of eter- 
nity. 

" Here, take this watch, my friend," said the 
noble Lord Russell, when he mounted the scaffold 
to die as a patriot-martyr; " take this watch, I 



Eternity. 209 

have no more to do with time. My thoughts are 
now about eternity." 

So would I say to many a reader with whom I 
have grown intimate in these columns — take your 
Bible, my friend ; learn from it how to live and 
how to die. You will soon have done with time. 
Let your thoughts be about Eternity. 
18* 



c-$w-$u> 




4ttftl£tK 



Ready ! 

" TTTHEN Death calls the roll, always be 
WW ready to answer, Here!" was the 
everyday motto of the famous trapper 
of the prairie. It was the shrewd backwoods- 
man's paraphrase of a still wiser and holier max- 
im, " Be ye also ready ; for in such an hour as 
ye think not the Son of Man cometh." This is 
one of our Saviour's aphorisms that will be al- 
ways timely to the end of time. Every one ad- 
mits its truth. Every one will admit the neces- 
sity of preparation for death. And yet there 
may be many a reader of these pages, who is 
within a few months, or even a few weeks of the 
eternal world, and yet has a very indistinct idea 
of what constitutes a fit preparation for death. 
Perhaps the following brief questions may aid 
those who are sincerely desirous not to be found 
wanting when the grim messenger — in the trap- 
per's expressive phrase — " calls the roll." 



Ready ! 211 

I. Is your business in the right state to be 
left? We do not mean, is every honest debt 
paid ? for it is hardly possible for even the most 
careful merchant or mechanic to so manage his 
affairs as to be entirely free from even the small- 
est obligations. But we do mean that every man 
should endeavor, as a matter of conscience, to 
keep his affairs in such a well-ordered state, that 
if death should meet him in the rail-car, or smite 
him from the summer-cloud, his creditors should 
not suffer the unjust loss of a single farthing. 
Nor should his executors be obliged to wade 
through a quagmire of confusion in order to ar- 
rive at an accurate knowledge of his estate, and 
its indebtedness. It is no more honest to cheat 
our fellow men from our coffins than to cheat them 
while alive. The debt I bequeath to my family 
or my executors is just as binding as the note that 
to-day lies in the bank with my signature on its 
face. It is hardly worthy of a Christian man- 
hood to "take the benefit of the act" by creeping 
into one's sepulchre. Let us see to it that no 
reproaches of the wronged and the defrauded are 
ever heard above our sleeping dust. 

II. Have you made your will? Some men 



212 Ready! 

are absolutely afraid to make their wills, lest 
death should overhear the scratch of the pen, and 
be the sooner in his summons to them to lay 
down the pen for ever. This is a strange and 
yet a very common superstition. Many a man 
dreads to draw up a will as if it were the signing 
of his own death-warrant. We will waste no 
words on such preposterous folly. Make a will, 
my friend ! if you have no more property to de- 
vise than had that" poor minister of Christ who 
sat down and wrote, " I bequeath to my darling 
wife my Bible and my sermons and my few 
books ; to my dear children I bequeath these 
words, / have been young and now I am old, 
yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken 
or his seed begging bread." The first provision 
in a good man's will should be for those whom 
God has made fairly dependent on him. Healthy 
and well-educated children do not always, of ne- 
cessity, belong to this class. But infirm parents 
and bedridden kinsfolk commonly do. When we 
have provided for all who have an honest claim 
on our posthumous support, then it is wisest to 
make Christ our largest legatee. Christians — 
ay, and impenitent worldlings too — ought to re- 



Ready ! 213 

member that their wills are not only to be record- 
ed in the surrogate's office, but in those books 
which will be opened on the day of judgment. 
Give everything you can spare to the Lord while 
you live ; and leave him the rest when you die. 
It will be a blessed thing to have some well- 
trained orphan, or liberated slave, or Christian- 
ized outcast, come and plant roses on our tomb, 
and say with grateful tears, " Here lies one who 
cared for my soul." 

III. Are you forgiven ? 

We do not refer now to such unhappy griefs 
or injuries as you may have thoughtlessly or in- 
tentionally inflicted on your fellow men. Let 
not the sun of life go down on such wrongs un- 
atoned. Let no injuries or harsh words unre- 
paired be buried with you in your coffin. It will 
be enough to make the nettles grow out of the 
greensward that covers your ashes. 

But we refer especially at present to that for- 
giveness that you are to seek through the media- 
tion of the Saviour. Friend ! you need forgive- 
ness. That long hideous catalogue of sins ; not 
mere mistakes, not mere slips of the hand and 
tongue, not mere infirmities, but SINS black as 



214 Ready ! 

midnight in God's view, they must be forgiven 
or you are lost. Those evil words that ought to 
have blistered the mouth that uttered them — 
those ungrateful deeds flung back into the face 
of heavenly love — those breakings of God's holy 
law — those profaned Sabbaths, and lost opportu- 
nities for saving souls — those woundings of 
Christ and grievings of the Spirit — those sins so 
exceeding sinful, have they been blotted out? 
The path of pardon you probably know. It leads 
to the cross of Christ. " Through his name who- 
soever believeth in him shall receive remission of 
sins." In the pages of my Bible I read, " He is 
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Have you 
made honest confession of your offences against 
God ? Have you clenched the sincerity of your 
confession by abandoning all discovered sin, and 
by refusing any quarter to your dearest lusts ? 
Have you earnestly and believingly sought par- 
don throuo;h the atoning Saviour ? Then do not 
distress yourself about any " unpardonable sin/' 
There will be none such standing against you on 
God's book. For he has pledged himself to for- 
give every sin that you repent of in the name of 



Ready! 215 

Christ, and which you abandon to please your 
Redeemer. Blessed is the man whose transgres- 
sions are covered ! Blessed is the man to whom 
God imputeth not sin ! 

Many other important questions might be 
started. But if you can give a prompt unhesita- 
ting ~Yes to the above-named interrogations, then 
fear not to hear your own name in the fatal roll- 
call. You are ready to answer, " Here !" You 
need not to be either ashamed or afraid to make 
your appearance at the door of your Father's 
house. That door will open to you with an 
" abundant entrance." You will need to shed 
no tears on your dying bed. In view of parting 
with life you may say, with one of England's 
sweetest singers : 

" Life ! we have been long together, 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather, 

'Tis hard 'to part when friends are dear, 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 
Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time ; 
Say not good-night ; -but in that happier clime, 

Bid me good-morning /" 




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